Relationship between Spring Shapes and the Ratio of wear Volume to the Worn Area in Nuclear Fuel Fretting

Sliding and impact/sliding wear test in room temperature air and water were performed to evaluate the effect of spring shapes on the wear mechanism of a fuel rod. The main focus was to quantitatively compare the wear behavior of a fuel rod with different support springs (i.e. two concaves, a convex and a flat shape) using a ratio of wear volume to worn area (De)-The results indicated that the wear volumes at each spring condition were varied with the change of test environment and loading type. However, the relationship between the wear volume and worn area was determined by only spring shape even though the wear tests were carried out at different test conditions. From the above results, the optimized spring shape which has more wear-resistant could be determined using the analysis results of the relation between the variation of De and worn surface observations in each test condition.