Effectiveness of lubricant additives for copper‐alloy‐steel sliding contacts

A selection of additives and their performance and compatibility with a variety of copper alloys have been evaluated in an SRV test set-up. The tests show a remarkable variation of tribological behaviour with a clear relation to both the type of lubricant / additive and the type of alloy. One ester-based additive showed outstanding friction and wear reduction for some groups of copper alloys. In order to better understand the fundamental mechanisms, we applied a variety of surface analyses, such as 3D confocal white light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron microscopy. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.