Common to liquids, solids and substances in between the former two is that if a stress is applied to them, they will strain. Stress may be visualized by placing a small amount of fluid between two parallel plates. When one plate slides over the other, forces act on the fluid dependent upon the rate of the plate movement. This causes a shear stress on the liquid. Recall laminar flow of fluids through a tubular vessel. Strain is the response to the stress. If solids are elastic, they deform and return to their original shape. Since fluids are not elastic and, hence, viscous, their deformation is irreversible.

Introduction to rheology

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01802145/document

Modeling and simulation in tribology across scales: An overview

The reach of tribology has expanded in diverse fields and tribology related research activities have seen immense growth during the last decade. This review takes stock of the recent advances in research pertaining to different aspects of tribology within the last 2 to 3 years. Different aspects of tribology that have been reviewed including lubrication, wear and surface engineering, biotribology, high temperature tribology, and computational tribology. This review attempts to highlight recent research and also presents future outlook pertaining to these aspects. It may however be noted that there are limitations of this review. One of the most important of these is that tribology being a highly multidisciplinary field, the research results are widely spread across various disciplines and there can be omissions because of this. Secondly, the topics dealt with in the field of tribology include only some of the salient topics (such as lubrication, wear, surface engineering, biotribology, high temperature tribology, and computational tribology) but there are many more aspects of tribology that have not been covered in this review. Despite these limitations it is hoped that such a review will bring the most recent salient research in focus and will be beneficial for the growing community of tribology researchers.

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A review of recent advances in tribology

Global energy consumption due to friction and wear in the mining industry

Zinc dialkyldithiophosphate additives are used to control wear and inhibit oxidation in almost all engine oils as well as many other types of lubricant. They limit wear primarily by forming a thick, protective, phosphate glass-based tribofilm on rubbing surfaces. This film formation can occur at low temperatures and is relatively indifferent to the chemical nature of the substrate. There has been considerable debate as to what drives ZDDP tribofilm formation, why it occurs only on surfaces that experience sliding and whether film formation is controlled primarily by temperature, pressure, triboemission or some other factor. This paper describes a novel approach to the problem by studying the formation of ZDDP films in full film EHD conditions from two lubricants having very different EHD friction properties. This shows that ZDDP film formation does not require solid–solid rubbing contact but is driven simply by applied shear stress, in accord with a stress-promoted thermal activation model. The shear stress present in a high-pressure contact can reduce the thermal activation energy for ZDDP by at least half, greatly increasing the reaction rate. This mechanism explains the origins of many practically important features of ZDDP films; their topography, their thickness and the conditions under which they form. The insights that this study provides should prove valuable both in optimising ZDDP structure and in modelling ZDDP antiwear behaviour. The findings also highlight the importance of mechanochemistry to the behaviour of lubricant additives in general.

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On the Mechanism of ZDDP Antiwear Film Formation

The aim of this paper was to understand the parameters influencing the grease film thickness in a rolling elastohydrodynamically lubricated contact under fully flooded conditions at medium speeds. Film thickness measurements were taken under pure rolling for six commercial greases and their bled oils. The grease film thickness was found to be higher than corresponding bled oil, suggesting the presence of thickener in the contact. No rheological properties (characterized by steady and dynamic shear) showed any direct relation to the film thickness of the studied greases. AFM measurements of the thickener microstructure, from which the dimensional properties of the thickener particles (fibers/platelets/spheres) were estimated, showed that the relative increase in the film thickness due to entrainment of the thickener was proportional to the ratio of thickener volume fraction to the size of the fibers/platelets/spheres. Hence, with the same concentration, smaller thickener particles lead to the generation of thicker films than larger thickener particles. Next, this relation was used to establish the percentage of the thickener particles passing through the contact. Depending on the grease type, between about 1 and 70 % of the thickener particles were found to travel through the contact.

/pdf/effect-of-thickener-particle-geometry-and-concentration-on-4d8a6e3mrd.pdf

Effect of Thickener Particle Geometry and Concentration on the Grease EHL Film Thickness at Medium Speeds

An experimental study using both a controlled stress and a controlled strain rheometer has been undertaken to characterize lubricating grease in shear, creep, stress relaxation, and oscillatory flow, with a main focus on determining the yield stress. The yield stress was examined using a cone–plate and parallel-plate system with smooth and rough surfaces. Clear discrepancies were observed in the yield stress values obtained using different techniques where oscillatory strain sweep measurements seem to be the best choice. This technique is less sensitive to wall slip, shows good reproducibility, and is relatively easy to perform. The method also shows that the yield stress is a function of the imposed frequency and therefore of the time domain. At lower values of shear—that is, in the linear viscoelastic regime—there is no structural breakdown and the rheology of the grease can be described by the Maxwell model where the stress and the strain are almost proportional to each other. Based on this observation, a novel method to determine the yield stress is proposed: “The yield stress can be determined from the point where this linearity no longer applies.” This method is compared to those that are commonly used. The yield stress was found to depend exponentially on temperature and linearly on frequency.

On a new method to determine the yield stress in lubricating grease

Film thickness in a grease lubricated ball bearing

In this paper, a wear model is introduced for the mild wear present in boundary-lubricated systems protected by additive-rich lubricants. The model is based on the hypothesis that the mild wear is mainly originating from the removal of the sacrificial layer formed by a chemical reaction between the base material and the additive packages present in the lubricant. By removing a part of this layer, the chemical balance of the system is disturbed and the system will try to restore the balance for which it uses base material. In this study, mechanical properties reported throughout literature are included into the wear model based on observed phenomena for this type of systems. The model is validated by model experiments and the results are in very good agreement, suggesting that the model is able to simulate wear having a predictive nature rather than on empirical-based relationships as Archard’s linear wear model. Also a proposal is made to include the transition from mild to severe wear into the model creating a complete wear map.

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Mild Wear Prediction of Boundary-Lubricated Contacts

In this article, the shear degradation of lithium 12-hydroxy stearate grease will be measured using an in-house-developed Couette aging machine. In this device the shear rate is well defined. The a...

/pdf/a-model-for-shear-degradation-of-lithium-soap-grease-at-2cfyypvuv6.pdf

Rob Bosman

Papers

Effect of Thickener Particle Geometry and Concentration on the Grease EHL Film Thickness at Medium Speeds

On a new method to determine the yield stress in lubricating grease

Film thickness in a grease lubricated ball bearing

Mild Wear Prediction of Boundary-Lubricated Contacts

A Model for Shear Degradation of Lithium Soap Grease at Ambient Temperature