Lubricants, Volume 8, Issue 3 (March 2020) – 15 articles

As rolling bearings are widely used in various machines, there is a strong need to detect any problems as early as possible. Although vibration analysis is commonly used in the diagnosis of rolling bearings, it is possible that the failure of such bearings might be detected earlier by an acoustic emission (AE) technique. Methods for detecting potential fatigue damage in a thrust ball bearing by AE signal analysis and by vibration analysis were compared. For the AE signal analysis, the maximum amplitude and the frequency spectrum were used to detect and identify fatigue damage in the bearing. Features of AE signals detected when a defect was artificially formed on the raceway surface of a bearing by using a Vickers hardness tester were also examined. The AE technique detected initial cracks due to fatigue damage earlier than the vibration technique. Additionally, AE signals were always detected during bearing fatigue tests, but the AE signals detected during the running-in process, crack initiation, crack propagation, and flaking all contained different frequency components. Furthermore, the correlation map between the frequency spectra of AE signals and deformation and fracture phenomena (friction and wear modes) was updated by adding the new findings of this study. Full article

The development of new materials that mimic cartilage and its function is an unmet need that will allow replacing the damaged parts of the joints, instead of the whole joint. Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrogels have raised special interest for this application due to their biocompatibility, high swelling capacity and chemical stability. In this work, the effect of post-processing treatments (annealing, high hydrostatic pressure (HHP) and gamma-radiation) on the performance of PVA gels obtained by cast-drying was investigated and, their ability to be used as delivery vehicles of the anti-inflammatories diclofenac or ketorolac was evaluated. HHP damaged the hydrogels, breaking some bonds in the polymeric matrix, and therefore led to poor mechanical and tribological properties. The remaining treatments, in general, improved the performance of the materials, increasing their crystallinity. Annealing at 150 °C generated the best mechanical and tribological results: higher resistance to compressive and tensile loads, lower friction coefficients and ability to support higher loads in sliding movement. This material was loaded with the anti-inflammatories, both without and with vitamin E (Vit.E) or Vit.E + cetalkonium chloride (CKC). Vit.E + CKC helped to control the release of the drugs which occurred in 24 h. The material did not induce irritability or cytotoxicity and, therefore, shows high potential to be used in cartilage replacement with a therapeutic effect in the immediate postoperative period. Full article

The a-C:H (amorphous carbon-hydrogen) films belong to the family of DLC (diamond-like carbon) coatings. The a-C:H coating was deposited on medical grade CoCrMo substrates by plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition (PA-CVD) using benzene as gaseous precursor. Benzene offers an aromatic structure, which affects the a-C:H properties after plasma decomposition. A zirconia ball was sliding at two different frequencies, 50 Hz or 1Hz, against the uncoated and a-C:H coated CoCrMo. The frequency of 1 Hz is typical for human movement during fast walking. The harsh sliding conditions with a normal load of 100 N and 50 Hz frequency simulate extreme overloading of the biomedical sliding partners. It gives insight into the failure mechanisms. The wear tests were carried out in laboratory air (dry, RH: 15.6%) or using hyaluronic gel as lubricant. The hyaluronic gel acts as an effective intermediate medium. It adheres very well to both, a-C:H coating and zirconia. No wear was evident on the ZrO₂ ball at 1 Hz and 100 N. Minor wear traces were observed on the a-C:H coating only. A wear coefficient of 0.16 × 10⁻⁶ mm³/N·m were calculated for a-C:H coated CoCrMo after ZrO₂ ball sliding with 1 Hz and 100 N in hyaluronic gel. This is two orders of magnitude lower in comparison to dry sliding of ZrO₂ ball against DLC coated CoCrMo with 1 Hz. The coefficient of friction (COF) remained below 0.09 until the hyaluronic gel starts to lose viscosity. This finding pronounces the importance of a proper homogeneous lubrication during operation of the biomedical joints. For extreme harsh tribological loading like sudden jumps of a patient with artificial joints, the application of an intermediate layer before a-C:H coating needs further evaluation. Full article

This article features with the enhancement of the static coefficient of friction by laser texturing the contact surfaces of tribological systems tested under dry friction conditions. The high-rate laser technology was applied for surface texturing at unprecedented processing rates, namely using powerful ultrashort pulses lasers in combination with ultrafast polygon-mirror based scan systems. The laser textured surfaces were analyzed by ion beam slope cutting and Raman measurements, showing a crystallographic disordering of the produced microscopic surface features. The laser induced self-organizing periodic surface structures as well as deterministic surface textures were tested regarding their tribological behavior. The highest static coefficient of friction was found of µ₂₀ = 0.68 for a laser textured cross pattern that is 126% higher than for a fine grinded reference contact system. The line pattern was textured on a shaft-hub connection where the static coefficient of friction increased up to 75% that demonstrates the high potential of the technology for real-world applications. Full article

Spacecraft mechanisms commonly undergo extended periods of storage, either on-ground, or in-flight and there are an increasing number of missions for which some element of long-term storage may be required. Despite the obvious potential for degradation of lubricants during storage which might impact mechanism functionality or life and so even become mission-threatening, today’s understanding of storage phenomena is rather incomplete. This paper provides consolidation and review of recent experimental studies in this area and considers the range of storage conditions and associated degradation phenomena which could impact different lubricants. Whilst some storage best practice guidelines exist, experimental verification of the impact of storage phenomena has rarely been carried out and test data is rather scarce and incomplete. Given the absence of comprehensive data to support design, lubricant selection or the development of storage protocols, it is shown that for all lubricant types careful control of storage and test environments combined with monitoring of the evolving tribological performance during periodic mechanism exercising are presently the most effective storage risk mitigations. Full article

In the last few decades, in the lubricant industry, the request for new performing additives has been becoming imperative. In this scenario, control at the nanoscale can be the key factor for the improvement of more efficient nanolubricants. Herein, after a discussion about the nanoparticles’ four main lubrication mechanisms, considerable attention is devoted to the usage of reduced graphene oxide/graphene oxide (rGO/GO) nanosheets in tribology. Moreover, graphene surface functionalization is reviewed, also including unexplored results in the field of lubrication. As far as the literature is concerned, it can be postulated that rGO/GO nanosheets can reduce wear and friction. Wear reduction is obtained by deposition and film formation, while friction reduction is related more to the shear and lamination of the sheets on the contacting surfaces. Nevertheless, the two phenomena are interrelated and work in sync. In this context, it is of high importance to form a homogenous suspension for a continuous nanosheet supply after deposition and shearing. The focus of this review was placed on the main issues still to be overcome, e.g., the literature results in rationalization; dispersion stability enhancement; and finding the optimum concentration in the delicate balance of different components. Possible solutions for their efficient overcoming are eventually reported. Full article

The rotational dynamics and lubrication of the piston pin of a Gasoline engine are investigated in this work. The clearance plays an essential role for the lubrication and dynamics of the piston pin. To obtain a realistic clearance, as a first step, a thermoelastic simulation is conducted for the aluminum piston for the full-load firing operation by considering the heat flow from combustion into the piston top and suitable thermal boundary conditions for the piston rings, piston skirt, and piston void. The result from this thermoelastic simulation is a noncircular and strongly enlarged clearance. In the second step, the calculated temperature field of the piston and the piston-pin clearance are used in the simulation of the piston-pin journal bearings. For this journal bearing simulation, a highly advanced and extensively validated method is used that also realistically describes mixed lubrication. By using this approach, the piston-pin rotation and lubrication are investigated for several different operating conditions from part load to full load for different engine speeds. It is found that the piston pin rotates mostly at very slow rotational speeds and even changes its rotational direction between different operating conditions. Several influencing effects on this dynamic behaviour (e.g., clearance and pin surface roughness) are investigated to see how the lubrication of this crucial part can be improved. Full article

In this work, effective methods for monitoring friction and wear of journal bearings integrated in future UltraFan^® jet engines containing a gearbox are presented. These methods are based on machine learning algorithms applied to Acoustic Emission (AE) signals. The three friction states: dry (boundary), mixed, and fluid friction of journal bearings are classified by pre-processing the AE signals with windowing and high-pass filtering, extracting separation effective features from time, frequency, and time-frequency domain using continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and a Support Vector Machine (SVM) as the classifier. Furthermore, it is shown that journal bearing friction classification is not only possible under variable rotational speed and load, but also under different oil viscosities generated by varying oil inlet temperatures. A method used to identify the location of occurring mixed friction events over the journal bearing circumference is shown in this paper. The time-based AE signal is fused with the phase shift information of an incremental encoder to achieve an AE signal based on the angle domain. The possibility of monitoring the run-in wear of journal bearings is investigated by using the extracted separation effective AE features. Validation was done by tactile roughness measurements of the surface. There is an obvious AE feature change visible with increasing run-in wear. Furthermore, these investigations show also the opportunity to determine the friction intensity. Long-term wear investigations were done by carrying out long-term wear tests under constant rotational speeds, loads, and oil inlet temperatures. Roughness and roundness measurements were done in order to calculate the wear volume for validation. The integrated AE Root Mean Square (RMS) shows a good correlation with the journal bearing wear volume. Full article

Lubricating greases are markedly visco-elastic materials. Stressed by a friction process, this special material shows a drop of a measured shear stress or viscosity. This typical behaviour is observed in a number of papers and, therefore, is well known. Some different explanations can be found but most of them describe a structural degradation caused by the friction process. This paper attempts to elucidate the conditions that promote that structural change and understand this behaviour as an intrinsic response of the system. Full article

(1) Background: Boron-based diffusion layers possess great application potential in forging and die-casting due to their favorable mechanical and thermophysical properties. This research explores the enhanced wear resistance of tungsten hot-work steel through boriding and boroaluminizing. (2) Methods: Thermal-chemical treatment (TCT) of steel H21 was carried out. Pure boriding was introduced to the substrate through heating a paste of boron carbide and sodium fluoride 1050 °C for two hours. As for boroaluminizing, 16% of aluminum powder was added to the boriding paste. (3) Results: It was shown that boriding resulted in the formation of an FeB/Fe₂B layer with a tooth-like structure. A completely different microstructure was revealed after boroaluminizing—namely, diffusion layer with heterogeneous structure, where hard components FeB and M_x (B,C) were displaced in the matrix of softer phases—Fe₃Al and α-Fe. In addition, the layer thickness increased from 105 μm to 560 μm (compared to pure boriding). The maximum microhardness values reached 2900 HV0.1 after pure boriding, while for boroaluminizing it was about 2000 HV0.1. (4) Conclusions: It was revealed that the mass loss during wear test reduced by two times after boroaluminizing and 13 times after boriding compared to the hardened sample after five-min testing. Full article

In the sheet metal stamping process, during sliding contact between the tool and sheet, it is expected that severe events such as tool wear or fracture on the sheet generate acoustic emission (AE) burst waveforms. Attempts have been made in the literature to correlate the AE burst waveform with the wear mechanisms. However, there is a need for additional studies to understand the frequency characteristics of the AE burst waveform due to the severity and progression of the galling wear. This paper will determine the AE frequency characteristics that can be used to monitor galling wear, independent of the experimental process examined. The AE burst waveforms generated during the stamping and scratch tests are analysed in this paper to understand the change in the AE frequency characteristics with the galling severity. These AE burst waveforms were investigated using the Hilbert Huang Transform (HHT) time-frequency technique, band power, and mean-frequency. Subsequently, these AE frequency features are correlated with the wear behaviour observed via high-resolution profilometer images of the stamped parts and scratch surfaces. Initially, the HHT technique is applied to the AE burst waveform to understand the influence of wear severity in the power distribution over the wide AE frequency range. Later, the AE bandpower feature is used to quantitatively analyse the power in each frequency interval during the unworn and worn tool conditions. Finally, the mean-frequency of AE signal is identified to be able to determine the onset of galling wear. The new knowledge defined in this paper is the AE frequency features and wear measurement feature that can be used to indicate the onset of galling wear, irrespective of the processes examined. Full article

In this work, aluminum multicomponent alloys were studied after friction with steel in a mixed lubrication regime. The resulting secondary structures on the friction surface were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive analysis (EDX), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD). In addition to the mass transfer of steel counterbody particles, phase transformations and new chemical compounds formed as a result of interaction with the lubricant were revealed. The release of elements, mainly magnesium and to a lesser extent zinc, from a solid solution of aluminum alloy was also observed, which indicates the occurrence of a non-spontaneous reaction with a negative entropy production. Full article

The aim of the paper was to discuss different effects, such as, among others, agglomeration of selected nanoparticles, particularly those from zirconia, on the tribological behavior of lubricants. The explanation of the difference between the concepts of ‘aggregation’ and ‘agglomeration’ for ZrO₂ nanoparticles is included. The factors that influence such an agglomeration are considered. Classification and thickeners of grease, the role of additives therein, and characteristics of the lithium grease with and without ZrO₂ additive are discussed in the paper. The role of nanoparticles, including those from ZrO₂ utilized as additives to lubricants, particularly to the lithium grease, is also discussed. The methods of preparation of ZrO₂ nanoparticles are described in the paper. The agglomeration of ZrO₂ nanoparticles and methods to prevent it and the lubrication mechanism of the lithium nanogrease and its tribological evaluation are also discussed. Sample preparation and a ball-on disc tester for investigating of spinning friction are described. The effect of ZrO₂ nanoparticles agglomeration on the frictional properties of the lithium grease is shown. The addition of 1 wt.% ZrO₂ nanoparticles to pure lithium grease can decrease the friction coefficient to 50%. On the other hand, the agglomeration of ZrO₂ nanoparticles in the lithium grease can increase twice the friction coefficient relative to that for the pure grease. Full article