Electrochemical instrumentation of a wear simulator to study tribo-corrosion phenomena in PWR environment

EDF wants to understand better tribo-corrosion mechanisms involved in its Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR). A wear machine able to work in high temperature and high pressure water was electrochemically instrumented in order to study the common action of friction and corrosion. This paper describes this new device. A few results obtained at ambient temperature are presented. Reasonable agreement was obtained between these results and those obtained with classical pin on disk tribometer. First high temperature tests have been performed and should soon be reported. (authors)