Impact of surface enrichment and morphology on sputtering of EUROFER by deuterium

•A fluence-dependent reduction of the sputter yield was observed when bombarding EUROFER steel with 200 eV D ions.•The sputter yield was reduced to 29% ± 5% of the initial value at a fluence of 1024 D/m2.•The impact on the sputter yield of both W surface enrichment and surface morphology were investigated with the aid of the SDTrimSP and SDTrimSP-3D codes.•The combined effect of W surface enrichment and surface morphology is an estimated reduction of the sputter yield of 27% ± 4%, in agreement with the measured values and data from literature.•The heterogeneous formation of a spiked surface morphology was investigated with the aid of dynamic 3-D simulations with SDTrimSP-3D, finding qualitative agreement with the experimental results.