Beruflich Dokumente
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FRAMATOME-ANP Technical Centre, Avenue B Marcet, Porte Magenta, 71200 Le Creusot France
damien.kaczorowski@framatome-anp.com
ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to show that in the nuclear industry, such as in many
cases, wear is a combination of mechanical, material and environmental parameters.
The influence of water chemistry is well illustrated. The particular wear
characteristics observed in a nuclear plant on worn components were reproduced
with a specific tribometer developed by FRAMATOME-ANP.
1. INTRODUCTION
of rigidity K. The mobile tube (length 11 mm,
In nuclear power plants, slender tubular external diameter 9.7 mm and thickness 0.95 mm) is
components are subjected to vibrations in a placed around a rod, rigidly clamped at its ends. Four
Pressurised High Temperature Water (PHTW) electro-magnets, create a controlled motion of the
environment. As a result, the two contacting surfaces, tube, resulting in simple impacts, orbital sliding or
tubes and their guides undergo impact at low contact orbital sliding plus impact. The deflection of the
pressures [1]. The components are usually made of rings support, measured with pressure sensors, gives
stainless steel and it was found that the influence of the normal and tangential forces.
the PHTW, combined with other actions (such as Eddy current sensors are used to obtain the
corrosion, third body effect and contact kinematics) differential displacement of the tube. The entire
leads to a particular wear of the material [2, 3]. system (electro-magnets and dynamic data
Therefore, this paper aims to show that the acquisition) is computer controlled.
environment (waters temperature and pH), play a role The conformal cylinder-cylinder contact, with a
in the wear rate of the surfaces. length (L) of 3 mm, leads to low Hertzian contact
pressures (p0) of around 60 MPa, under a normal load
(FZ) of 15 N, which is classical in our tests. The total
2. TRIBOMETER AND MATERIAL elastic deformation () is around 25 nm which is
lower than the asperities height (around 2m) and
The tribometer is housed in an autoclave (fig. thus, the contact can not be uniform on all the contact
1a) at a temperature of 300 5C and a pressure of 15 area but concerns only the asperities. The calculation
0.3 MPa. There is no circulation of the water and its of the number of contact points obtained by
chemical composition could be similar to the primary simulating the contact between a rigid plane and the
coolant pressurised water reactor ([O2]<0.1 ppm, [B]: roughness of a tube was realised with a model
1300 ppm, [Li]: 2 ppm, [Cl-]: 0.05 ppm), its pH is developed by Zahouani [4]. The real area is estimated
about 7 or could be modified (without Li) to reach a to be a straightforward geometrical intersection of the
pH about 5 . plane and the rough surface. For a classical pressure
Figure 1 presents a schematic representation of of 60 MPa, the real contact area corresponds to
the tribometer. The contact consists of two coaxial around 1% of the theoretical surf ace (fig. 2.).
cylinders. The stationary ring (height 5 mm, internal A statistical analysis of the contact repartition and an
diameter 10.7 mm), is mounted on a flexible support associated wear model is developed in [5].
8 THE ANNALS OF UNIVERSITY DUNREA DE JOS OF GALAI
FASCICLE VIII, 2004, ISSN 1221-4590
TRIBOLOGY
a) b)
Fig. 1. Main view of the FRAMATOME tribometer (a) and schematic cross section of the tribometer (b).
Both samples (tube and ring) are made of In order to study the film in detail, its surface
austenitic stainless steel (18 wt % Cr, 10 wt % Ni, 2 has been smoothed using a nano-machining
wt % Mn and 70 wt % Fe), (AISI 304L). procedure, described in a previous paper [10]. In one
place, one crystal grain is shifted showing a small
Contact area smoother surface, which is indented. The indentation
curve reveals that the surface of the remaining
material is very soft. Modelling the stiffness [11]
indicates that, in this tested area (1 m2 in size), the
remaining material consisted a soft thin layer, with a
hardness value of a few hundred MPa and a thickness
of around 10 nm, covering a harder material. For this
substrate, hardness values of 5 GPa (hardness of the
stainless steel) and 20 GPa have been measured in
two different places. These results agree with the
previous description of the heterogeneous oxide layer.
Externallayer(
External Fe3O
layer(Fe 4)4)
3O
a) b)
Fig. 5. SEM micrograph of worn surfaces of a tube after impact plus sliding tests (a) We can observe the
elongated indent like shape marks obtain in orbital sliding with impact conditions. They cover the entire wear scar.
(b) Cross section of the worn area. There is no apparent work hardening or plastic deformation of the grains.
10 THE ANNALS OF UNIVERSITY DUNREA DE JOS OF GALAI
FASCICLE VIII, 2004, ISSN 1221-4590
TRIBOLOGY
14
12
Mass variation (mg)
10
0
Tube pH7 Ring pH7 Tube pH5 Ring pH5