Tribology lecture 2 Types of Wears Film failure impairs the relative movement between solid bodies and inevitably

causes severe damage to the contacting surfaces. The consequence of film failure is severe wear. Adhesive wear - Wear in these circumstances is the result of adhesion between contacting bodies. Fatigue wear- When the intervening films are partially effective then milder forms of wear occur and these are often initiated by fatigue processes due to repetitive stresses under either sliding or rolling. Abrasive wear- the film material consists of hard particles or merely flows against one body without providing support against another body then a form of wear, which sometimes can be very rapid. Erosive wear- due to impacting particles Cavitations wear- caused by fast flowing liquids (as a result of the rapid formation and collapse of bubbles in a liquid, caused by the movement of something in the liquid such as a propeller, or by waves of high frequency sound) Corrosive wear - In some practical situations the film material is formed by chemical attack of either contacting body and while this may provide some lubrication, significant wear is virtually inevitable Oxidative wear when atmospheric oxygen is the corroding agent Fretting wear- When the amplitude of movement between contacting bodies is restricted to, for example, a few micrometres, the film material is trapped within the contact and may eventually become destructive impact wear- caused by impact between two solids. Melting wear- occurring when the contact loads and speeds are sufficiently high to allow for the surface layers of the solid to melt Diffusive wear- occurring at high interface temperatures COST OF FRICTION AND WEAR The enormous cost of tribological deficiencies to any national economy is mostly caused by the large amount of energy and material losses occurring simultaneously on virtually every mechanical device in operation. When reviewed on the basis of a single machine, the losses are small. However, when the same loss is repeated on perhaps a million machines of a similar type, then the costs become very large. For example, about two hundred years ago, it was suggested by Jacobs Rowe that by the application of the rolling element bearing to the carriages the number of horses required for all the carriages and carts in the United Kingdom could be halved. Since the estimated national total number of horses involved in this form of transportation was at that time about 40,000, the potential saving in horse-care costs was about one million pounds per annum at early 18th century prices This example suggest that a form of tribology equation can be used to obtain a simple estimate of either costs or benefits from existing or improved tribological practice. Total Tribological Cost/Saving = Sum of Individual Machine Cost/Saving x Number of Machines

Physical Properties of Lubricants INTRODUCTION Before discussing lubrication and wear mechanisms some information about lubricants is necessary. What are lubricants made of, and what are their properties? Are oils different from greases? Can mineral oils be used in high performance engines? Which oils are the most suitable for application to gears, bearings, etc.? What criteria should they meet? What is the oil viscosity, viscosity index, pressure-viscosity coefficient? How

can these parameters be determined? What are the thermal properties and temperature characteristics of lubricants? An engineer should know the answers to all of these questions. In simple terms, the function of a lubricant is to control friction and wear in a given system. The basic requirements therefore relate to the performance of the lubricant, i.e. its influence upon friction and wear characteristics of a system. Another important aspect is the lubricant quality which reflects its resistance to degradation in service. Most of the present day lubricant research is dedicated to the study, prevention and monitoring of oil degradation since the life-time of an oil is as important as its initial level of performance. Apart from suffering degradation in service, which may cause damage to the operating machinery, an oil may cause corrosion of contacting surfaces. The oil quality, however, is not the only consideration. Economic considerations are also important. For example, in large machinery holding several thousand litres of lubricating oil, the cost of the oil can be very high. OIL VISCOSITY The parameter which plays a fundamental role in lubrication is oil viscosity. Different oils exhibit different viscosities. In addition, oil viscosity changes with temperature, shear rate and pressure and the thickness of the generated oil film is usually proportional to it. So, at first glance it appears that the more viscous oils would give better performance, since the generated films would be thicker and a better separation of the two surfaces in contact would be achieved. This unfortunately is not always the case since more viscous oils require more power to be sheared. Consequently the power losses are higher and more heat is generated resulting in a substantial increase in the temperature of the contacting surfaces which may lead to the failure of the component. For engineering applications the oil viscosity is usually chosen to give optimum performance at the required temperature. Knowing the temperature at which the oil is expected to operate is critical as oil viscosity is extremely temperature dependent. The viscosity of different oils varies at different rates with temperature. It can also be affected by the velocities of the operating surfaces (shear rates). The knowledge of the viscosity characteristics of a lubricant is therefore very important in the design and in the prediction of the behavior of a lubricated mechanical system. Dynamic Viscosity Consider two flat surfaces separated by a layer of fluid of thickness h as shown in the figure below. The force required to move the upper surface is proportional to the wetted area A and the velocity u, i.e.: FAxu Assume that the fluid film separating the surfaces is made up of a number of infinitely thin layers. Compare now two fluid films of different thickness made up of equispaced layers. If the surface velocity remains unchanged in these two cases then a single layer in the thicker film will undergo less relative sliding than in the thinner film. The velocity gradients for these two layers will be different. Since the thicker film contains more single layers, less force will be needed to shear a single layer so the viscous resistance will vary as the reciprocal of the film thickness 1/h. The force needed to move the upper surface is thus proportional to: F A x u/h (2.1)

This relationship is maintained for most fluids. Different fluids will exhibit a different proportionality constant , called the dynamic viscosity. The relationship (2.1) can be written as: F = x A x u/h

Before the introduction of the SI system the most commonly used dynamic viscosity unit was the Poise. Incidentally this name originated not from an engineer but from a French medical doctor Poiseuille, who studied the flow of blood. For practical applications the Poise [P] was far too large thus a smaller unit, the centipoise [cP], was more commonly used. The SI unit for dynamic viscosity is Pascalsecond [Pas]. The relationship between Poise and Pascal- second is as follows: 1 [P] = 100 [cP] 0.1 [Pas]