Comparative study on fretting wear damage mechanisms of 316L steel in dry air and liquid lead-bismuth eutectic environments

Due to flow induced vibration caused by coolant circulation, fretting wear inevitably occurs between fuel cladding, heat exchanger tubes and their holders in Gen IV lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) cooled nuclear reactors. Focusing on this issue, in the current work, fretting wear behavior and damage mec...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Qi Sun, Yu Qin, Haowen Tang, Qian Yang, Pengfei Yang, Xiaoqiang Fan, Minhao Zhu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-09-01
Series:Journal of Materials Research and Technology
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Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2238785425019258
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Summary:Due to flow induced vibration caused by coolant circulation, fretting wear inevitably occurs between fuel cladding, heat exchanger tubes and their holders in Gen IV lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) cooled nuclear reactors. Focusing on this issue, in the current work, fretting wear behavior and damage mechanisms in air and LBE environments at 350 °C were comparatively investigated. The results reveal that both of the microstructures under fretting interfaces in these two environments are composed of third body layer (TBL) and plastic deformation layer (PDL). While, fretting wear damage in LBE environment is obviously more serious, due to the change of fretting wear mechanisms. In air environment, fretting damage is dominated by abrasive wear and oxidation wear. In contrast, delamination wear also plays a crucial role in LBE environment, which is related to the phase transformation from austenite to ferrite induced by the elective leaching of Ni. Accordingly, the possible reasons behind such a phenomenon were proposed and discussed. The results in this work are not only expected to better understand failure behavior of fretting wear in liquid LBE environment, but also provide a possible guide for selecting the optimal damage protection method.
ISSN:2238-7854