State of art report for high temperature wear test of SMART MCP and CEDM bearing material

Wear resistance properties of machine elements has been more critical in view of its significant effect on life extension, economics and material saving because it has been recognized that nearly 80 percent of damages of mechanical elements in the friction pairs are due to the material loss by wear. And wear properties have direct influence on the life of a machine in a great extend under extremely severe operating condition. Therefore highly improved wear properties of machine elements operating in such circumstances is heavily required. The purpose of this report is to survey current technology for high temperature wear test in order to establish the test plan for the life evaluation of SMART MCP and CEDM bearing materials. Friction and wear test will be done under high pressure (170 MPa) and high temperature (350 degree C) with water as lubricant to simulate the operating condition of the nuclear power reactor. Because pump type for MCP is selected as the caned motor pump which needs no mechanical sealing, the rotating shaft on which bearing is fully submerged by main coolant with high temperature. So MCP bearing operates without additional lubricant. CEDM is adopted as the ball-screw type with fine controllability. So the driving part is designed as the immersed-in type by main coolant. Therefore the anti-wear and reliability of driving parts are much consequent to guarantee the lifetime and the safety of the whole system. Tribometer adapted to high temperature and pressure circumstance is needed to execute bearing material testing. Test parameters are material, sliding speed, sliding distance and applied load. In order to identify the wear mechanism, optical microscope and surface roughness testers are required. The result of this report will provide an elementary data to develop bearing materials and to estimate bearing lifetime for the bearings of MCP and CEDM in SMART. (author)