Mao Ueda

‘When I started my career of lubricant R&D in Shell, PCS machines were already frequently used in laboratories in Japan, especially the MTM and EHD rigs. These machines were easily operated by inexperienced people like me. When I was in charge of the R&D of engine oil, I used to work on the R&D of engine oil for OEMs. In the R&D project, I was struggling with a candidate oil to give pitting on a tappet in an engine test. A mechanism by which the oil gave pitting was needed to understand more fully in order to develop a new candidate oil.’

‘Through the MTM/SLIM study, it was found that the candidate oil quickly formed very thick tribofilm to inhibit running on surfaces. Then an additive formulation was changed to form tribofilm more slowly. This study helped to understand the expected mechanism and also to convince a customer to run the engine test again. The newly established formulation did not give pitting and passed the engine test.’

‘We will keep using PCS machines because PCS equipment is becoming the industry standard, i.e., OEMs specifically ask lubricant suppliers to get data by using PCS equipment. I’ve learned quite a lot about PCS machines during my PhD in Imperial College London. This makes me more confident to set a condition using PCS equipment to simulate a particular phenomenon such as mild wear, scuffing and pitting.’