Lubrication Effectiveness and Sustainability of Solid/Liquid Additives in Automotive Tribology

In the automotive industry, losses results from friction and wear processes are huge, and every year almost thirty percent of the economy is consumed due to tribological losses. Recent advancement in technologies now permits the tribologist to design suitable lubrication techniques that were unachievable in the past. Recently, vapor film deposition or adding a thin layer of lubricants with improved physical and chemical properties is enormous. However, the suitability of such type of techniques is still in developing stage. To control the contact mechanism of sliding/rolling elements in the automotive industry, this work reports the importance of solid/liquid particles in lubrication. The friction and wear behavior of nanoparticles based on thin film coating and liquid lubrication technique is studied with traditional lubrication concept of vapor deposition and fluid film lubrication. Both techniques are necessary for designing lubricating film at the nanometer scale to control the surface properties of materials at nano/micro scales. Further, nanoparticles of self-lubricious materials are also used to prepare laboratory grease and are compared with traditional industrial grease. The obtained results are discussed by the intrinsic mechanism of sliding/rolling, theories of friction, wear, and involved parameters in the tribological tests. The potential application of prepared vapor deposition films/nanolubricants is loaded gears, bearings, piston cylinder, etc. The work can also be suitable in other industries where failure occurrence is repeated continuously due to resulting frictional losses.