The paper presents the investigations of high power plasma interaction with material surfaces under conditions simulating the ITER disruptions and type I ELMs. Different materials were exposed to plasma with repetitive pulses of 250 µs duration, the ion energy of up to 0.6 keV, and the heat loads varying in the 0.5–25 MJ m−2 range. The plasma energy transfer to the material surface versus impact load has been analysed. The fraction of plasma energy that is absorbed by the target surface is rapidly decreased with the achievement of the evaporation onset for exposed targets. The distributions of evaporated material in front of the target surface and the thickness of the shielding layer are found to be strongly dependent on the target atomic mass. The surface analysis of tungsten targets exposed to quasi-steady-state plasma accelerators plasma streams is presented together with measurements of the melting onset load and evaporation threshold, and also of erosion patterns with increasing heat load and the number of plasma pulses.