Abstract
A fretting wear experiment in roam temperature air was performed to evaluate the wear mechanism of fuel rod using a fretting wear tester, which has been developed for experimental study, The main focus was to compare the wear behaviors of fuel rod against support springs with different contact contours (i.e. concave and convex). Wear volume, degree or surface hardening and adhesion tendency of wear particle were examined by the surface roughness tester. The result indicated that with a change of contact condition from contact force of 5 N to 0.1 mm gap, the wear volume of tube increased in the condition of concave spring, but slowly decreased in convex spring. From the results of SEM observation, wear mechanism of each test condition was also dependent on the spring shapes. The wear mechanism of each test condition in room temperature air is discussed.
