Plasma and Fusion Research

Volume 2, 052 (2007)

Letters

Performance Test of Diamond-Like Carbon Films for Lubricating ITER Blanket Maintenance Equipment under GPa-Level High Contact Stress

Nobukazu TAKEDA, Satoshi KAKUDATE, Masataka NAKAHIRA and Kiyoshi SHIBANUMA

ITER Tokamak Device Group, Japan Atomic Energy Agency

(Received 20 July 2007 / Accepted 15 November 2007 / Published 21 December 2007)

Abstract

Diamond-like carbon (DLC) coating was tested as a candidate solid lubricant for transmission gears of the maintenance equipment of the blanket of the ITER instead of an oil lubricant. The wear tests using the pin-on-disk method were performed on disks with SCM440 and SNCM420 as the base materials and coated with soft, layered, and hard DLCs. All cases satisfied the required allowable contact stress (2 GPa) and lifetime (10⁴ cycles), and therefore the feasibility of the DLC coating was validated. Among the three types of DLCs, the soft DLC showed the best performance.

Keywords

ITER, blanket, remote handling, diamond-like carbon, solid lubricant, gear, wear test, friction coefficient

DOI: 10.1585/pfr.2.052

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Publisher's Note

This article was originally published with a typographical error in the page 052-1. The article has been corrected as follows:
P.052-1, right-hand column, line 16: "the red machine" -> "the real machine"

This paper may be cited as follows:

Nobukazu TAKEDA, Satoshi KAKUDATE, Masataka NAKAHIRA and Kiyoshi SHIBANUMA, Plasma Fusion Res. 2, 052 (2007).

(Revised 25 December 2007)