Field to Lab Correlation and Lubrication Oil Change Frequency Estimation for Two Wheeled Vehicles through Oil Analysis Technique

The customer needs and expectations in the automotive industry have become more demanding in recent past. This puts huge pressure on new product development (NPD) cycle as well as timelines on the automotive OEMs. The design verification and proving falls at the end of any NPD cycle and consumes significant amount of time. The major constituents of design verification and proving phase are the accelerated life tests conducted at a laboratory scale. These tests need to be correlated to the field usage condition in a correct and precise way in order to shorten the time spent in design iterations.

This paper discusses on arriving at a correlation between field usage and one of the laboratory scale accelerated life tests for a small four stroke two wheeled vehicle engine through lubrication oil analysis technique. The lubrication oil used in different customer engines is collected from field and analyzed. The same exercise was done for one of the accelerated life tests conducted in laboratory and correlation between field usage and accelerated life tests is arrived at. The paper discusses the tools and techniques used for arriving at a correlation constant and also the safe oil replacement frequency for field usage conditions.