Tungsten is the main candidate material for plasma-facing armour components
in future fusion reactors. In-service, fusion neutron irradiation creates
lattice defects through collision cascades. Helium, injected from plasma,
aggravates damage by increasing defect retention. Both can be mimicked using
helium-ion-implantation. In a recent study on 3000 appm helium-implanted
tungsten (W-3000He), we hypothesized helium-induced irradiation hardening,
followed by softening during deformation. The hypothesis was founded on
observations of large increase in hardness, substantial pile-up and slip-step
formation around nano-indents and Laue diffraction measurements of localised
deformation underlying indents. Here we test this hypothesis by implementing it
in a crystal plasticity finite element (CPFE) formulation, simulating
nano-indentation in W-3000He at 300 K. The model considers thermally-activated
dislocation glide through helium-defect obstacles, whose barrier strength is
derived as a function of defect concentration and morphology. Only one fitting
parameter is used for the simulated helium-implanted tungsten; defect removal
rate. The simulation captures the localised large pile-up remarkably well and
predicts confined fields of lattice distortions and geometrically necessary
dislocation underlying indents which agree quantitatively with previous Laue
measurements. Strain localisation is further confirmed through high resolution
electron backscatter diffraction and transmission electron microscopy
measurements on cross-section lift-outs from centre of nano-indents in
W-3000He