EHD

The main role of a lubricant is to form a protective, low shear strength film between rubbing surfaces and thereby reduce friction and surface damage. The science, or art, of both the lubricant and the mechanical designer is to develop combinations of lubricant and mechanical system best able to form such films. This task is not straightforward since modern technology is continually demanding lower friction and better protection over an ever-widening range of operating conditions. Furthermore, environmental concerns are also producing both design constraints and the need for rapid change.

The aim of this paper is to show how progress is being made by experimental research which looks inside rubbing contacts to see how lubricants behave therein. The paper focuses on concentrated contacts, as found in gears, cams and rolling element bearings, and describes a number of techniques for probing such contacts to observe just how a range of lubricant types, from greases to emulsions, behave in such contacts to reduce friction and form films.

A laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) technique has been used to measure fluid film thickness in a compliant, sliding contact under low-load/low-pressure conditions. The soft contact between an elastomer hemisphere and a glass disc is lubricated by a liquid containing fluorescent dye. The contact is then illuminated with 532 nm laser light through the glass disc, and viewed with a fluorescence microscope. From the intensity of emitted radiation, film thickness maps of the contact are determined. Previous calibration procedures have used a separate calibration piece and test specimen with possible errors due to differences in reflectivity between the calibration and test specimens. In the work reported in this paper a new calibration process is employed using the actual test sample, thereby avoiding such errors.

Results are reported for a sliding contact between PDMS and glass, lubricated with glycerol and water solutions under fully flooded and starved conditions. It was found that, for glycerol, the measured film thickness is somewhat lower than numerical predictions for both lubrication conditions. It is suggested that a combination of thermal effects and the hygroscopic nature of glycerol may cause the lubricant viscosity to drop resulting in thinner films than those predicted for fully flooded contacts. Starvation occurs above a critical entrainment speed and results in considerably thinner films than predicted by fully flooded I-EHL theory. A numerical study has been carried out to determine the effect of the observed starvation on film thickness. Predicted, starved film thickness values agree well with those obtained experimentally.

Keywords: Film thickness, Compliant contact, Fluorescence, Starvation

This paper reports a fundamental study of lubricant film formation with model synovial fluid components (proteins) and bovine serum (BS). The objective was to investigate the role of proteins in the lubrication process. Film thickness was measured by optical interferometry in a ball-on-disc device (mean speed range of 2-60 mm/s). A commercial cobalt-chromium (CoCrMo) metal femoral head was used as the stationary component. The results for BS showed complex time-dependent behaviour, which was not representative of a simple fluid. After a few minutes sliding BS formed a thin adherent film of 10-20 nm, which was attributed to protein absorbance at the surface. This layer was augmented by a hydrodynamic film, which often increased at slow speeds. At the end of the test deposited surface layers of 20-50 nm were measured. Imaging of the contact showed that at slow speeds an apparent 'phase boundary' formed in the inlet just in front of the Hertzian zone. This was associated with the formation of a reservoir of high-viscosity material that periodically moved through the contact forming a much thicker film. The study shows that proteins play an important role in the film-forming process and current lubrication models do not capture these mechanism.

Keywords: Artificial hip joint, synovial fluid, boundary lubrication, CoCrMo alloy