Self-welding behavior of various materials in a sodium environment (IV) Development of self-welding equipment and its preliminary test

Mizobuchi, Shotaro*; Kano, Shigeki; Nakayama, Koichi; Namekawa, Masaru; Owada, Tetsuro*; Atsumo, Hideo

We developed and installed the self-welding equipment (SW-2) in self-welding Wearing Test Loop at the end of March, 1974, while had installed the wearing equipment at the end of March, 1972 and have continued to test in sodium and argon since then. SW-2 has the functions to simulate to the sliding and contact modes of LMFBR's components closelier than conventional equipments in foreign countries. The characteristics of SW-2 are as follow: (1)To be able to compress and self-weld materials in high temperature sodium and then to estimated self-weldability with the results of in-sodium tensile or in-sodium torsion tests of self-welded materials. (2)All of torsional, tensile and compressive loads can be gained by oil pressure units, and then the operation and structure of equipment became simple. (3)To be easily able to test in other environments (ex. in inert gas) by rolling the equipment of 180 degrees. (4)To be able to test under the normal load from less than 100kg to 4,000kg. Also, we conducted a part of the function test in high temperature argon and ascertained the performance of equipment to be satisfactory.