Framatome designs and manufactures pressurized water reactors. In 2023, 63% of electricity produced in France comes from nuclear reactors. Within the reactor, some components are subjected to wear, due to fluid excitation, and to movements of rods used to adapt the reactor’s power.
The working environment of these components is pressurized water at high temperature with a dedicated...
Tribocorrosion research have greatly advanced our understanding of the interplay between wear and corrosion in different materials. While considerable progress has been made in elucidating the tribocorrosion responses of passive alloys such as stainless steels, the combined effects of corrosion and mechanical wear in active steels remain less explored.
In this work, the tribo-electrochemical...
The aim of our study was to evaluate the tribo-corrosion properties of different grades of high-speed steels subjected to different heat treatment strategies. Conventionally heat-treated steel grades were compared to un-conventionally treated comprising cryogenic treatment cycle in order to investigate the effect of chemical composition, microstructure and hardness of the material on...
Gold is considered a noble metal due to its chemical inertness and resistance to oxide formation within the stability potential window of water. However, gold is very soft, and it is commonly alloyed with other metals (copper, silver, zinc) to improve its mechanical properties. The use of less noble alloying elements such as copper or silver, may lead to a preferential dissolution of those...