INVESTIGATION OF THE TRIBOLOGY BEHAVIORS OF AUTO-RESTORATION ADDITIVE UNDER HEAVY LOADING CONDITIONS

Lubricant additives are crucial in minimizing friction and wear, and protecting surfaces under severe contact condition. The traditional additive can only diminish the wear rate of materials by increasing the sliding distance. As a wear-self-compensation lubricating additive, the auto-restoration technology (ART) of worn surface of metals is a novel technique for the repair of mechanical equipment and breakthrough of tribology theory that cannot obey the traditional law. The previous experiments have measured the friction and wear behaviors of ART additives under low load conditions. This paper presents the tribology behaviors of auto-restoration lubricating additive under heavily loaded condition. The results show that the auto-restoration lubricating additive can reduce pronouncedly the frictional coefficient and wear weight; after 6 h wear examination the friction coefficient is only 0.027. The morphology of the worn surface and the chemical composition of tribofilm have been observed by SEM. It proved that the worn surface is very smooth and there exists a tribochemical reaction between the metal and the auto-restoration lubricating additive.