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Empirical Investigation of Electricity Self-Generation in a Lubricated Sliding–Rolling Contact

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Abstract

The paper reports the empirical observations of voltage generation in a lubricated tribocontact with different oils altering load, sliding and temperature. The investigation is done in the context of research of the root cause of white etching cracks (WEC) failure in bearings. Tested oils of different additive packages found completely different electrical behavior. The oil, which is known to produce WECs in laboratory tests, demonstrated non-zero voltage generation.

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Acknowledgements

The work was done during the research scholar of Dr. Mihails Ščepanskis at Argonne National Laboratory (October 2015–March 2016). The scholar was funded by the Baltic-American Freedom Foundation. This work is also supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Wind Energy Technology Office under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Marc Ingram and Afton Chemical for providing formulated oils and useful discussion. The authors also like to acknowledge Dr. Robert Erck (ANL) for valuable support in preparation of the experiment. The principle idea of the presented experiment was generated during the discussion between Dr. Mihails Ščepanskis and Dr. Walter Holweger (Schaeffler) in July 2015.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Energy System Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 Cass Ave, Lemont, IL, 60439, USA

    Mihails Ščepanskis, Benjamin Gould & Aaron Greco

  2. Laboratory for Mathematical Modeling of Environmental and Technological Processes, University of Latvia, Zeļļu iela 23, Riga, 1002, Latvia

    Mihails Ščepanskis

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Delaware, 126 Spencer Laboratory, Newark, DE, 19716, USA

    Benjamin Gould

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  1. Mihails Ščepanskis
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  2. Benjamin Gould
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Correspondence to Mihails Ščepanskis.

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Ščepanskis, M., Gould, B. & Greco, A. Empirical Investigation of Electricity Self-Generation in a Lubricated Sliding–Rolling Contact. Tribol Lett 65, 109 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-017-0892-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-017-0892-y

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