Investigation of anti-wear performance of automobile lubricants using thin layer activation analysis technique

An investigation was carried out to examine the anti-wear behavior of automobile lubricants using thin layer activation analysis technique. For this study disc gears made of EN 31 steel were labeled with a small amount of radioactivity by irradiating with 13 MeV proton beam from a particle accelerator. Experiments on wear rate measurement of the gear were carried out by mounting the irradiated disc gear on a twin-disc tribometer under lubricated condition. The activity loss was monitored by using a NaI(Tl) scintillation detector integrated with a multichannel analyzer. The relative remnant activity was correlated with thickness loss by generating a calibration curve. The wear measurements were carried out for four different types of lubricants, named as, L1, L2, L3 and L4. At lower load L1 and L4 were found to exhibit better anti-wear properties than L2 and L3, whereas, L4 exhibited the best anti-wear performance behavior than other three lubricants at all the loads and speeds investigated.