Performance test of diamond-like carbon films for lubricating ITER blanket maintenance equipment under GPa-level high contact stress

Takeda, Nobukazu; Kakudate, Satoshi; Nakahira, Masataka; Shibanuma, Kiyoshi

In the present paper, a Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) coating was assumed as a candidate of solid lubricants for the transmission gears of the ITER blanket maintenance equipment instead of liquid lubricant. The seizure tests using "pin-on-disk" method were performed with the disks of SCM440 and SNCM420 coated by the soft, layered and hard DLC. All cases satisfied the required allowable contact pressure, 2 GPa, and lifetime, cycles and thus, the feasibility of the DLC coating was validated. Among the three types, the soft DLC showed the best performance.