On the mechanism of boundary lubrication. II. Wear prevention by addition agents

Abstract

If two metal surfaces slide over each other in the presence of a lubricant and under high load, high pressures and temperatures prevail a t those isolated spots which actually carry the load, leading to wear and possibly to breakdown. The action of wear preventing agents under these conditions has been studied in detail and it has been found that such agents are effective through their chemical polishing action, by which the load becomes distributed over a larger surface and local pressures and temperatures are decreased. Especially effective are compounds containing phosphorus or other elements of group V of the periodic system. These have been found to form a metal phosphide or homolog on the surface which is able to alloy with the metal surface, lowering its melting point markedly, and by this action aiding greatly in maintaining a polish. The wear experiments were carried out with a highly sensitive and accurate method which uses metal-plated steel balls as its sliding elements. Under the experimental conditions additions of 1.5% triphenyl phosphine or triphenyl arsine in white oil gave wear prevention factors of 7.2 and 12.2 respectively (relative to pure white oil). A further addition of 1% of a long chain polar compound is able to double the wear prevention factor obtained with the polishing agents and wear prevention factors as high as 17.6 have been observed. The specifically physical action of the long-chain polar compounds is discussed in the preceding paper.