Lubricants on innovative surfaces

One of the main source of lower overall efficiency, and therefore higher CO2 emissions, of internal combustion engines (ICE) is friction. For this, Industry is trying to introduce new technologies, such as surface coatings or surface texturing, which seem to have encouraging performances. Despite this, lubricants continue to be the same designed for classic steel surfaces. Several lubricant/surface tribocouples are possible, combining components materials like steel, aluminum and titanium, and then coating them with soft or hard materials (graphite, DLC, nitrides) or nanostructured ones (graphene), with different kinds of oil, from mineral to PAO, PAG and esters. The effect of additives and combinations of additives, to oil formulation must be investigated in order to design the best recipe for each kind of component surface.