Surface phenomena lubrication

Often the production of new materials such as composite materials heavily involves processes at interfaces. Thin films on surfaces are often dominated by surface effects. Examples are latex-films, coatings, and paints. The flow behavior of powders and granular media is determined by surface forces. In tribology, wear is reduced by lubrication which again is a surface phenomenon. 

Apart from oxidation of the lubricant and the metal surfaces, there can be complex tribo-chemical reactions. Chemical reactions at the surfaces can be stimulated by different factors. One factor is heating due to friction. This can either be a global effect (elevated mean temperature of surfaces and lubricant) or a localized phenomenon. Especially in situations where mixed or boundary lubrication exists, the direct contact of surface asperities can lead to high flash temperatures. At these hot spots temperatures in excess of 1000°C promote chemical reactions and surface melting. Other factors promoting chemical reactions are ... 

The tenn tribology translates literally into the study of nibbing . In modem parlance this field is held to include four phenomena adhesion, friction, lubrication and wear. For the most part these are phenomena that occur between pairs of solid surfaces in contact with one another or separated by a thin fluid film. Adhesion describes the resistance to separation of two surfaces in contact to while friction describes their tendency to resist shearing. Lubrication is the phenomenon of friction reduction by the presence of a fluid (or solid) film between two surfaces. Finally, w>ear describes the irreversible damage or defonnation that occurs as a result of shearing or separation. 

In the past decade, effects of an EEF on the properties of lubrication and wear have attracted significant attention. Many experimental results indicate that the friction coefficient changes with the intensity of the EEF on tribo-pairs. These phenomena are thought to be that the EEF can enhance the electrochemical reaction between lubricants and the surfaces of tribo-pairs, change the tropism of polar lubricant molecules, or help the formation of ordered lubricant molecular layers [51,73-77]. An instrument for measuring lubricant film thickness with a technique of the relative optical interference intensity (ROII) has been developed by Luo et al. [4,48,51,78] to capture such real-time interference fringes and to study the phenomenon when an EEF is applied, which is helpful to the understanding of the mechanism of thin film lubrication under the action of the EEF. 

However, the assumption of molecule orientation normal to the surface is not convincing enough for this author, and it does not consist well with the results of the molecular d5mamics simulations for the alkane confined between solid walls. An example in Fig. 3 shows that the chain molecules near the wall are found mostly lying parallel, instead of normal, to the wall [6]. This means that the attractions between lubricant molecules and solid wall may readily exceed the inter-molecule forces that are supposed to hold the molecules in the normal direction. Results in Fig. 3 were obtained from simulations for liquid alkane with nonpolar molecules, but similar phenomenon was observed in computer simulations for the functional lubricant PFPE (per-fluoropolyether) adsorbed on a solid substrate [7], confirming that molecules near a solid wall lie parallel to the surface. 

Fig. 30, while level-off phenomenon can be observed from the simulation result given in Fig. 33 for the rough surface in mixed lubrication. It is unclear at the present whether the downward turn shown in Fig. 30 is a manifest of real physical process, or a false phenomenon due to numerical inaccuracy. 

The data of Zink et al. (1998) illustrate the measurement by NRA of near-surface composition profiles in isotopically labelled polymer blends. If a mixture of polymers is adjacent to a phase interface (e.g. a solid or an air surface), often one of the components is preferentially attracted to the surface and will segregate to it, and this phenomenon will influence the tribological behaviour the interface (lubrication, wear and adhesion). 

Although we made no attempt to elucidate the mechanism of friction decreases in rubbers after surface fluorination, it seems to us that apart from the substitution of H atoms to F in the polymer macromolecule, which forms a fluoropolymer on the surface, there is another phenomenon that makes a significant contribution to the friction decreases, i.e., fluorination of carbon black, which is used in rubber recipes for reinforcement. It appears that when the carbon black in the surface of the rubber is fluorinated it produces a lubricating effect, followed by blooming on the surface of the treated rubber while it is under a friction load. So, in our opinion, two effects contribute to friction decrease of carbon-filled rubbers fluorination of the rubber macromolecules and fluorination of the carbon black rubbers that do not contain carbon black show a much smaller decrease in friction after XeF2 treatment. 

Evidence of attachment of an organic molecule to a metal surface by a particular group in the molecule is not only provided from surface tension data on the surface of liquid mercury but is also to be noted in the phenomenon of displacement of one liquid by another from a surface. The hydrocarbons adhere to metals much less tenaciously than molecules containing polar groups such as —COOH and —OH. Thus we find that a hydrocarbon may be removed from a metal surface by displacement with alcohol and also that the lubricating properties of a hydrocarbon are materially affected by the addition of hydrocarbon compounds containing polar groups (Hardy, Proc. Roy. 8oc. A, c. 650, 1922, A, ci. 487, 1923). 

An atom or molecule that approaches the surface of a solid always experiences a net attractive potential ). As a result there is a finite probability that it is trapped on the surface and the phenomenon that we call adsorption occurs. Under the usual environmental conditions (about one atmosphere and 300 K and in the presence of oxygen, nitrogen, water vapor and assorted hydrocarbons) all solid surfaces are covered with a monolayer of adsorbate and the build-up of multiple adsorbate layers is often detectable. The constant presence of the adsorbate layer influences all the chemical, mechanical and electronic surface properties. Adhesion, lubrication, the onset of chemical corrosion or photoconductivity are just a few of the many macroscopic surface processes that are controlled by the various properties of a monolayer of adsorbates. 

In gears and ball bearings, extremely high local pressures occur, at least for short periods of time for which the lubricant has no time to flow away from such a high-pressure region. Under these conditions, the above theory of hydrodynamic lubrication would predict a lubrication layer thickness that is smaller than the surface corrugation. However, experiments show that fluid film lubrication still holds under such conditions. To understand this phenomenon, we have to take two effects into account, which lead to elasto-hydrodynamic lubrication ... 

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