Wear progress model by impact fretting in steam generator tube

Fretting wear is one of the important degradation mechanisms of steam generator tubes in the nuclear power plants. Especially, impact fretting wear occurred between steam generator tubes and tube support plates or anti-vibration bar. Various tests have been carried out to investigate the wear mechanisms and to report the wear coefficients. Those are fruitful to get insight for the wear damage of steam generator tubes; however, most wear researches have concentrated on sliding wear of the steam generator tubes, which may not represent the wear loading modes in real plants. In the present work, impact fretting tests of steam generator tube were carried out. A wear progress model for impact-fretting wear has been investigated and proposed. The proposed wear progress model of impact-fretting wear is as follows; oxide film breaking step at the initial stage, and layer formation step, energy accumulation step and finally particle torn out step which is followed by layer formation in the stable impact-fretting progress. The wear coefficient according to the work-rate model has been also compared with one between tube and support.