• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.130-133
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• 2007

Fuel cladding tubes in nuclear fuel assembly are held up by supporting grids because the tubes are long and slender. Fluid flows of high-pressure and high-temperature in the tubes cause oscillating motions between tubes and supports. This is called as FIV (flow induced vibration), which causes fretting wear in contact parts of tube and support. The fretting wear of tube and support can threaten the safety of nuclear power plant. Therefore, a research about the fretting wear characteristics of tube-support is required. The fretting wear tests were performed with supporting grids and cladding tubes, especially after corrosion treatment on tubes, in water. The tests were done using various applied loads with fixed amplitude. From the results of fretting tests, the wear amounts of tube materials can be predictable by obtaining the wear coefficient using the work rate model. Due to stick phenomena the wear depth was changed as increasing load and temperature. The maximum wear depth was decreased as increasing the water temperatures. At high temperatures there are the regions of some severe adhesion due to stick phenomena.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.129-132
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• 2008

Fuel cladding tubes in nuclear fuel assembly are held up by supporting grids because the tubes are long and slender. Fluid flows of high-pressure and high-temperature in the tubes cause oscillating motions between tubes and supports. This is called as FIV (flow induced vibration), which causes fretting wear in contact parts of tube and support. The fretting wear of tube and support can threaten the safety of nuclear power plant. Therefore, a research about the fretting wear characteristics of tube-support is required. The fretting wear tests were performed with supporting grids and cladding tubes, especially after corrosion treatment on tubes, in water. The tests were done using various applied loads with fixed amplitude. From the results of fretting tests, the wear amounts of tube materials can be predictable by obtaining the wear coefficient using the work rate model. Due to stick phenomena the wear depth was changed as increasing load and temperature. The maximum wear depth was decreased as increasing the water temperatures. At high temperatures there are the regions of some severe adhesion due to stick phenomena.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.199-206
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• 2020

CoCr-based alloys have been developed as wear-resistant materials owing to their excellent mechanical properties and strong wear resistance. The purpose of this study is to experimentally assess the frictional and wear characteristics of CoCr-based alloys slid against two different counter materials subjected to various normal forces to determine the expansion applicability of CoCr-based alloys. CoCrMo and CoCr alloys were selected as the target materials and NiCr and NiCrB alloys as counter materials. Experimental tests were performed using a pin-on-reciprocating plate tribo-tester under dry lubrication. Before performing the tests, the surface of the specimens was observed through confocal microscopy and the hardness was measured using a micro-Vickers hardness tester. The wear volume of the plate was calculated at the end of the tests using confocal microscope data, and the wear rate was quantitatively obtained based on Archard's wear law. From the results, the wear rates of the CoCrMo specimens that slid against NiCr and NiCrB are 7.69 × 10^-6 ㎣/Nm and 5.26 × 10^-6 ㎣/Nm, respectively. The wear rates of the CoCr specimens that slid against NiCr and NiCrB were higher than those of the CoCrMo specimens by factors of approximately 4 and 8, respectively. The CoCrMo specimens further exhibited lower friction characteristics than the CoCr specimens. The findings of this study will be useful for expanded applications of CoCr-based alloys as wear-resistant materials for various mechanical parts.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.75-81
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• 2020

In this paper, we present an experimental investigation of the leakage and endurance performances of mechanical face seals in a 75-tonf turbopump for the Korea Space Launch Vehicle II first-stage engine. A mechanical face seal is used between the fuel pump and turbine to prevent mixing of the fuel and turbine gas. However, excessive leakage occurs through the carbon attached to the mechanical face seal bellows. To reduce this leakage, we redesign the mechanical face seal such that the contact area between the fuel and carbon is reduced, height of the carbon nose is reduced, and stiffness of the bellows is increased. Then, we conduct static and dynamic leakage tests and endurance tests to compare the performances of the original and modified mechanical face seals. The investigation of the leakage of the old and new mechanical face seals confirms that the leakage performance is significantly improved, by 80%, in the new design in comparison with the old design. The endurance tests demonstrate that the average wear rate of carbon in the new mechanical face seal is 0.1094 ㎛/s. The service lifetime is predicted to be 4,200 s, which is 28 times greater than the requirement. Finally, we present a new mechanical face seal in a 75-tonf turbopump, and perform a validation test in the real-propellant test facility at the NARO Space Center. Based on the test results, we can confirm that the modified mechanical face seal works well under real operating conditions.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.63-71
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• 2008

Friction and adhesion tests were conducted to investigate tribological characteristics of materials for MEMS/NEMS using atomic force microscope (AFM). AFM Si tips were chemically modified with a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) derived from trichlorosilane like octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) and (1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorooctyl) trichlorosilane (FOTS), and various materials, such as Si, Al, Au, Cu, Ti and PMMA films, were prepared for the tests. SAMs were coated on Si wafer by dipping method prior to AFM tip to determine a proper dipping time. The proper dipping time was determined from the measurements of contact angle, surface energy and thickness of the SAMs. AFM tips were then coated with SAMs by using the same coating condition. Friction and adhesion forces between the AFM Si tip modified with SAM and MEMS/NEMS materials were measured. These forces were compared to those when AFM tip was uncoated. According to the results, after coating OTS and FOTS, the friction and adhesion forces on all materials used in the tests decreased; however, the effect of SAM on the reduction of friction and adhesion forces could be changed according to counterpart materials. OTS was the most effective to reduce the friction and adhesion forces when counterpart material was Cu film. In case of FOTS, friction and adhesion forces decreased the most effectively on Au films.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.88-94
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• 2016

We conduct a series of fretting corrosion tests on tin-coated electric contact to evaluate the effects of lubricant on fretting corrosion behavior. We perform these tests with a constant contact force at 25℃ 50℃, 75°C, and 100℃. In the tests with a span amplitude of 30 μm, we could not determine the conventional behavior of the first, second, and third stages of the change in electric resistance during fretting corrosion and observed that the contact resistance continuously increases with the cycles. This behavior is due to the fact that the generation of oxides on the tin-coated contact is controlled and stabilized by the presence of lubricant. SEM observations on samples with a span amplitude of 77 μm at all testing temperatures confirm that there is less oxide debris on the fretting damaged surface. Hence, for tin-coated electric connector, the effect of lubrication on the lifetime of the electric contact increases as the fretting span decreases and testing temperature increases, compared to those for connector without lubricant. Especially, for a specimen with a span amplitude of 30 μm at 100℃, the increment in contact lifetime due to lubricant is found to be more than 20 times, compared to that without lubricant.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.98-105
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• 2021

The sensory stimulation of a cosmetic product has been deemed to be an ancillary aspect until a decade ago. That point of view has drastically changed on different levels in just a decade. Nowadays cosmetic formulators should unavoidably meet the needs of consumers who want sensory satisfaction, although they do not have much time for new product development. The selection of new products from candidate products largely depend on the panel of human sensory experts. As new product development cycle time decreases, the formulators wanted to find systematic tools that are required to filter candidate products into a short list. Traditional statistical analysis on most physical property tests for the products including tribology tests and rheology tests, do not give any sound foundation for filtering candidate products. In this paper, we suggest a deep learning-based analysis method to identify hand cream products by raw electric signals from tribological sliding test. We compare the result of the deep learning-based method using raw data as input with the results of several machine learning-based analysis methods using manually extracted features as input. Among them, ResNet that is a deep learning model proved to be the best method to identify hand cream used in the test. According to our search in the scientific reported papers, this is the first attempt for predicting test cosmetic product with only raw time-series friction data without any manual feature extraction. Automatic product identification capability without manually extracted features can be used to narrow down the list of the newly developed candidate products.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.8-14
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• 2022

Amorphous carbon (a-C) has excellent wear resistance and, therefore is used as a coating to protect numerous mechanical components to prolong their lifetimes. Among the a-C coatings, diamond-like carbon (DLC) and DLC-containing silicon (Si-DLC) receive extensive attention owing to their enhanced wear resistance and low frictional characteristics. In this study, the friction and wear characteristics of DLC and Si-DLC coatings are analyzed. For comparative analysis, DLC-coated and Si-DLC-coated vanes are utilized with the counterpart of a roller for the friction tests. Since the lubricated mechanical components are generally vulnerable to wear when a lubricant film does not form properly, friction tests are conducted under boundary lubrication conditions to promote wear. A cylinder-on-cylinder type tribometer is used to perform the friction tests with various normal load conditions. After the friction test, a 3D laser confocal microscope is used for quantifying the wear volume to calculate the wear rate of each specimen. Consequently, the DLC-coated specimen shows a lower coefficient of friction (COF) and wear rate than the specimen without the coating, while the Si-DLC coating shows a higher COF than the bare specimen. The results of this study are expected to contribute to improving the efficiency and reliability of compressors.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.205-212
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• 2022

This paper presents experimental measurements of the structural characteristics of a two-pad beam-type gas foil journal bearing and its rotordynamic performance for a high-speed motor-driven turbocompressor. The test bearing had two top foils and two beam foils, each with an arc length of ~180°. Each beam foil was etched to obtain 40 beams with six geometries of different lengths and widths. The insertion of beam foils into the bearing housing produces equivalent beam heights. The structural tests of the bearing with a non-rotating journal revealed a smaller bearing clearance and larger structural stiffness for the load-on-pad configuration than for the load-between-pads configuration. Rotordynamic performance measurements during driving tests up to 100 krpm demonstrated synchronous vibrations and subsynchronous vibrations with large amplitudes. The test was repeated after inserting the shim between the top foil and beam foil to reduce the bearing radial clearance. The reduced bearing clearance resulted in a reduction in the peak amplitude of the synchronous vibrations and an increase in the speed at which the peak amplitude occurred. In addition, the onset speed and amplitude of the subsynchronous vibrations were dramatically increased and diminished, respectively. The rotor coast-down tests at 100 krpm show that the reduction in the bearing clearance extends the time to rotor stop, thus implying an improvement in hydrodynamic pressure generation and a reduction in bearing frictional torque.

• KSTLE International Journal
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.11-15
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• 2007

The mechanical face seal has been tested in Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARl) for turbopump applications. In the turbopump under current development, the mechanical face seal is installed between fuel pump and turbine to prevent a mixture of fuel and combustion gas. Generally the mechanical face seal in turbopump is exposed to severe environment because of great rotational speed, high temperature of combustion gas and high level of pressure difference. Thus a series of tests were performed to guarantee the reliability of mechanical face seal by means of simulating the practical operating conditions. The tests were conducted up to 20,000 rpm with pressure difference of 800 kPa and temperature of 620 K In addition several carbon materials for mechanical face seal were conducted to the tests to compare the life time. During the tests, the performance against leakage was monitored and the carbon wear was also measured to estimate the life of a mechanical face seal The results show that the leakage flow rates of mechanical face seal is ignorable compared to an overall flow rate of fuel pump. The carbon material which has the finest wear resistance was found during the tests. Lastly no critical failure of mechanical face seal was found during the tests and the reliability of mechanical face seal for turbopump was successfully proved.