Progress report - ESR 10: Ju Shu

date: May 16, 2022

category: News

Efficient boundary lubrication with bio-based green chemical additives

This works aims to reduce the usage of conventional metallic lubricant additive by applying bio-based materials as substitute. After briefly summarizing current research progress, an idea was formulated that combining fatty acid, amine and ester respectively with low-concentration ZDDP and investigating the tribological performance of additive combination under reciprocation motion. The results show, with additive mixture system, ZDDP weakens the friction reduction ability of Acid, has no influence of ZDDP on the amine; however, clearly promotes the friction behaviour of Ester. When mixing bio-based materials with low-concentration ZDDP, Acid and Ester exhibit much smaller wear scar diameter than samples containing only acid or ester. Strong antagonistic effect was seen for additive mixture with Amine and ZDDP, showing larger amount of wear than the base oil, PAO4. More detailed surface analysis on the tribo-film will be conducted later to further understand the tribological phenomenon.

The key academic groups of TRIBOS consortium are leading and world renown in their own field of Tribology and Surface engineering. They are very complementary from point of view of surfaces, lubricants and interfaces, as well as engineering component design. Thus, their involvement in a single programme enables integration of the whole range of tribology sub-areas required for successful application solutions.