Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Schuster, Gary B..
The SP-100 Tribology Development program to investigate candidate coating materials for the SP-100 reactor is discussed. The SP-100 will operate at temperatures up to 1500 K in high vacuum. Background information, specific bearing requirements, the basis for coating material selection, testing methods, and initial results of the program are addressed.
Ensuring the desired grain size in the pure Re strip employed by the SP-100 space nuclear reactor design entails the establishment of an initial grain size in the as-received strip and the avoidance of excessive grain growth during subsequent fabrication. Pure Re tapered tensile specimens have been fabricated and tested in order to quantify the effects of grain-boundary migration. Grain size could be rendered fine and uniform by means of a rolling procedure that uses rather large reductions between short intermediate anneals. The critical strain regime varies inversely with annealing temperature.