A Comparative Tribological Performance of Lubricating Oils with Zinc Dialkyl Dithiophosphate and Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles as Additives

The present work compares the tribological properties of ZnO (Zinc Oxide) nanoparticle based lubricant with ZDDP (zinc dialkyl dithiophosphate) based lubricant. The nanolubricant was prepared by mixing the nanoparticles in base oil followed by ultrasonification and ZDDP based lubricant was prepared by mixing ZDDP and stirring with base oil. Base oil used was mineral base oil. Both the lubricants were tested at three different temperatures, loads and roughness values. The test was carried out on AISI 52100 steel samples prepared by wire cutting and were grinded to three different levels of surface roughness. Friction and wear tests were performed using a reciprocating sliding tribo-tester at three different loads and temperatures. Taguchi orthogonal array was used to reduce the number of experiments. SEM, EDS and AFM analysis were carried out to study the surface wear phenomenon. The coefficient of friction was found to be low in the case of ZnO nanolubricant but wear was found to be high compared to ZDDP based lubricant.