The integrity of high sputtering threshold of refractory tungsten with high thermal conductivity and weldability of copper is an attractive material selection as highly loaded plasma-interactive component in a fusion device. Their mismatch thermophysical proper-ties however construct great obstacles to unite the two metals. A feasible solution can be found to create gradient transitions between W and Cu. To avoid possible material failure originated from the process of fabrication and on service, optimization design of thermal stresses of W/Cu FGM was conducted via finite element analysis in the paper. It was found that a 71% reduction of thermal Mises stress in W/Cu FGM and a 80degreesC decrease of working temperature on W surface compared with those of non-FGM can be expected when gradient exponent p is selected 0.8 and the number of gradient layer n greater than or equal to 4. Cyclic impact test of the as-designed W/Cu FGM exhibited good thermal shock resistance, which can endure 50 cycles of water quenching with a temperature gap from 800degrees to 25degreesC, and 700 shots of pulsed laser impingement with a energy density of 123 MW/m(2) respectively, without delamination. Whereas fatigue crack or fracture occurred on W surface under overladen impingement, most likely these failures were caused by great thermal tensile stress during thermal shock.