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Experimental Investigation of Lubrication Properties at High Contact Pressure

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Abstract

A new test rig with an ability to obtain clear interference images at high pressure contacts has been developed. The technique of relative optical interference intensity has been used to obtain film thickness profiles and then lubrication properties of some base oils including six kinds of polyalphaolefin and four kinds of silicone oil have been studied at different pressures ranging from 1 to 3 GPa. The results show that viscosities of these lubricants have notable effect on slopes of film thickness curves (speed versus film thickness in log–log form), and the observed phenomenon is attributed to fluidity and molecular structure. A comparison of experimental central film thicknesses with computational work shows that at high loads the relationship between load and film thickness usually go against prediction given by Hamrock and Dowson. In addition, when more pressure is applied, the profiles of film thickness become more and more flat while rolling speed do little to change the shape of profiles.

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Acknowledgments

The study is financially supported by the International Science & Technology Cooperation Project, and the National Key Basic Research Program of China (2007CB607604 and 2009CB724404). The authors are grateful to the NSK Ltd. for providing them with the high precision steel balls.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, People’s Republic of China

    Huaping Xiao, Dan Guo, Xinchun Lu & Jianbin Luo

  2. School of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, China University of Petroleum, Beijing, 102249, People’s Republic of China

    Shuhai Liu

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  1. Huaping Xiao
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  2. Dan Guo
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  3. Shuhai Liu
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  4. Xinchun Lu
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  5. Jianbin Luo
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Correspondence to Dan Guo.

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Xiao, H., Guo, D., Liu, S. et al. Experimental Investigation of Lubrication Properties at High Contact Pressure. Tribol Lett 40, 85–97 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-010-9641-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-010-9641-1

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