Performance Analysis of Retrofitted Tribo-Corrosion Test Rig for Monitoring In Situ Oil Conditions

Abstract

Oils and lubricants, once extracted after use from a mechanical system, can hardly be reused, and should be refurbished or replaced in most applications. New methods of in situ oil and lubricant efficiency monitoring systems have been introduced for a wide variety of mechanical systems, such as automobiles, aerospace aircrafts, ships, offshore wind turbines, and deep sea oil drilling rigs. These methods utilize electronic sensors to monitor the “byproduct effects” in a mechanical system that are not indicative of the actual remaining lifecycle and reliability of the oils. A reliable oil monitoring system should be able to monitor the wear rate and the corrosion rate of the tribo-pairs due to the inclusion of contaminants. The current study addresses this technological gap, and presents a novel design of a tribo-corrosion test rig for oils used in a dynamic system. A pin-on-disk tribometer test rig retrofitted with a three electrode-potentiostat corrosion monitoring system was used to analyze the corrosion and wear rate of a steel tribo-pair in industrial grade transmission oil. The effectiveness of the retrofitted test rig was analyzed by introducing various concentrations of contaminants in an oil medium that usually leads to a corrosive working environment. The results indicate that the retrofitted test rig can effectively monitor the in situ tribological performance of the oil in a controlled dynamic corrosive environment. It is a useful method to understand the wear–corrosion synergies for further experimental work, and to develop accurate predictive lifecycle assessment and prognostic models. The application of this system is expected to have economic benefits and help reduce the ecological oil waste footprint.

Analyzing and Modelling the Corrosion Behavior of Ni/Al2O3, Ni/SiC, Ni/ZrO2 and Ni/Graphene Nanocomposite Coatings

“…It has been found in the literature [ 4 , 5 ] that the combined effects of both the mechanical and electrochemical parameters directly influence the electrochemical reactions on the surface of nanocoating. Khan-Nazir [ 6 , 7 ] suggested that electrochemical reactions on metal coating surfaces are stress-dependent.…”

Tribocorrosion Behavior of Inconel 718 Fabricated by Laser Powder Bed Fusion-Based Additive Manufacturing

“…(1) First, the experiment will be performed using the tribocorrosion monitoring test setup (Figure 1) developed in-house [21]. The setup consists of a pin-on-disk setup, and an electrochemical cell with three-electrode configuration.…”

Surface Energy and Tribology of Electrodeposited Ni and Ni–Graphene Coatings on Steel

“…The generation of large micron-sized wear particles (Figure 7a) during sliding causes entrapment of the particles at the asperity interface, which either led to pitting or embedding of the particle on the surface during repeated sliding. Since, steel exhibited moderately high surface energy with similar contact angles for distilled water and 3.5% NaCl, hence it could be expected to be susceptible to corrosion and tribocorrosion [42,61].…”