Progress report - ESR 1: Irfan Nadeem

date: May 01, 2022

category: News

Superior macro-scale tribological performance by the synergetic effect of graphene family materials and aqueous glycerol in self-mated steel contacts

Reducing friction is an utmost concern in the modern world due to its great prospect to reduce energy consumption and environment-friendliness. Glycerol provides superlubricity in industrially relevant sliding contacts such as steel and diamond-like carbon (DLC). With growing interest in green lubricants, we studied the synergetic effect of graphene based nanomaterials with aqueous glycerol for improved lubrication performance between self-mated steel contacts in a reciprocating sliding motion. The results show that the aqueous glycerol with graphene based nanoadditves show superior dispersion stability and significantly reduced the friction and wear. This striking decrease in the coefficient of friction and wear is due to the synergetic effect of aqeous glycerol and graphene layers. This work demonstrated that graphene based green nano lubricants have a great potential to replace conventional environment polluting lubricants and paved the way for further investigation to get a deep insight into active lubrication mechanisms.

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.