• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.313-323
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• 2003

The sliding wear behaviors of Zircaloy-4 nuclear fuel rod were investigated using two support springs with convex and concave shapes in room temperature air and water. The main focus is to compare the wear behavior of various test variables such as slip amplitude, environment, contact contours with different spring shape and a number of cycles. The results indicated that wear volume and maximum wear depth increased with slip amplitude in both air and water, but their trends tended to change according to the spring shapes and test environments. In air condition, the wear volume was controlled by wear debris behavior generated on worn surface. As a result, final wear volume and maximum wear depth decreased if a ratio of protruded wear volume to worn area $(D_p)$ would be saturated to specific value. This is because wear particle layer could accommodate large strain by accumulating and transforming wear particle layer. However, in water condition, metal-to metal contact was more dominant and wear volume was greatly affected by changed mechanical behavior between contact surfaces since wear debris should be generated after repeated plastic deformation and fracture. After wear test, worn surfaces were examined using optical microscope and SEM and details of wear mechanism were discussed using a ratio of wear volume to worn area $(D_e)$ at each test condition.

• KSTLE International Journal
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.60-67
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• 2002

Wear on the tube-to-spring contact is investigated experimentally, The vibration of the tube causes the wear while the springs support it As for the supporting conditions, the contacting normal farce of 5 N,0 N and the gap of 0.1 mm are applied. The gap condition is for considering the influence of simultaneous impacting and sliding on wear. The wear volume and depth decreases in the order of the 5 N,0 N and the gap conditions. This is explained from the contact geometry of the spring, which is convex of smooth contour, The contact shear force is regarded smaller in the case of the gap existence compared with the other conditions. The wear mechanism is considered from SEM observation of the worn surface. The variation of the normal contact traction is analysed using the finite element analysis to estimate the slip displacement range on the contact with consulting the fretting map.