Over 80% of the volume of international trade in goods is carried by sea. This implies that a large number of vessels are sailing all over the world. Use of lubricants in those vessels is critical for optimal performance of different equipment and moving parts, but in many cases the lubricants leak into the oceans. The environmental impact of lubricants in sea waters has trigger US EPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency) to launch the 2013 Vessel General Permit (VGP). The 2013 VGP establishes new rules forcing the use of environmentally acceptable lubricants (EAL) in all oil-to-sea interfaces unless technically infeasible. This regulation applies to all vessels bigger than 24 m operating within US Coastline.

In SINTEF and NTNU we closely work with international maritime companies, lubricant producers and subsuppliers to minimize the environmental impact by helping to replace hazardous and contaminant mineral oil by EALs (Environmentally Acceptable Lubricants).

More information about the project we work with are:

https://prosjektbanken.forskningsradet.no/en/project/FORISS/256542?Kilde=FORISS&distribution=Ar&chart=bar&calcType=funding&Sprak=no&sortBy=date&sortOrder=desc&resultCount=30&offset=0&Prosjektleder=Pernille%20Aga

https://prosjektbanken.forskningsradet.no/project/FORISS/309934?Kilde=FORISS&distribution=Ar&chart=bar&calcType=funding&Sprak=no&sortBy=score&sortOrder=desc&resultCount=30&offset=0&Fritekst=gely

https://prosjektbanken.forskningsradet.no/project/FORISS/332369?Kilde=FORISS&distribution=Ar&chart=bar&calcType=funding&Sprak=no&sortBy=score&sortOrder=desc&resultCount=30&offset=0&Fritekst=lubricant+production+norway

https://www.fmt.vsb.cz/real/en/about/objectives/

Lubricant formulation and production is a century-old industry in which the development of formulations is still based on existing recipes adding selected additives. The new products need to be tested in a stepwise procedure, starting in lab scale and scaling up until real tests can be performed. This long, expensive, and often frustrating process can be boosted with the help of Machine Learning (ML). Formulating lubricants requires gathering information of available chemicals and substances that have the physical and chemical characteristics required for providing a system with the desired friction and wear. Learning from the available databases of chemicals that could potentially become the next generation of lubricants requires new tools, methods, and new approaches, radically different from those used until now. We are using a ML approach in which we are mining databases available online and experimental databases generated in-house to formulate new lubricants.

Metal industry is one of Norway’s largest export industries. Production and forming of aluminum is the largest part of the Norwegian metal industry. One of the main challenges in production and forming of aluminum is that it tends to stick to surfaces during production and increase wear and degradation of most materials and coatings used in the forming tools. These mechanisms are complex tribological processes where a multidisciplinary approach (from tribological testing, materials physics, mechanics and structures and microstructures) is required to fully understand the degradation mechanisms. Advanced coating and lubricant technologies are constantly develop to minimize the wear, extend the lifetime of the forming tools, and enable new production processes of components with high-end quality. The Tribology Gemini Centre contributes to this development through different projects, such as:

https://www.sintef.no/en/projects/2017/galf-galling-in-aluminium-forming/

Link to CMS!

Norway also produces end-product metal components for different applications. Tailored properties of the final products can be achieved through new processing routines and heat treatment processes which the aim of maximizing the lifetime of the products. The tribology group is contributing to optimize the tribological properties of same alloys used in different products in different applications.

https://www.sintef.no/prosjekter/2019/tailorpro-skreddersy-materialegenskaper-gjennom-nye-prosesseringsrutiner-for-hoykvalitets-stalprodukter2/

Erosion on wind turbine leading edges reduces turbine performance and is one of the most critical degradation mechanisms (in terms of maintenance cost) occurring on wind turbine farms.

The Tribology Gemini Centre has developed a new modular test rig based on DNVGL-RP-0171 able to test and compare coatings and protective layers applied to the wind turbine blades in different working conditions.

https://www.sintef.no/en/projects/2017/coatlee-coatings-for-reduction-of-leading-edge-erosion/

https://www.sintef.no/en/all-laboratories/tribology-laboratory/helicopter-test-rig-for-simulating-blade-leading-edge-erosion-lee/

Direct Riser Tensioner (DRT) cylinders are complex tribological systems which include the use of seals, guide bands, hydraulic fluids/lubricants and materials in relative movement. These components fail due to the combined effect of mult idegradation processes (friction, wear, corrosion and mechanical stresses). The origins of these degradation mechanisms lie at the atomic level and cause enormous economical loses, safety consequences and potential environment impact. Our research has contributed to better understanding the interaction of the elements of the tribological system at the atomistic level.

Friction between moving parts and the associated wear are estimated to be directly responsible for 25% of the world’s energy consumption. SSLiP seeks to establish a radically new way to drastically reduce friction, with potentially enormous technological and societal impact. The driving concept is structural superlubricity, extremely low friction that takes place at a lattice misfit between clean, flat, rigid crystalline surfaces. Structural superlubricity is currently a lab curiosity limited to micrometer scale and laboratory times. SSLiP will bring this to the macroscale to impact real-life products. The key idea is the use of tribo-colloids: colloidal particles coated in 2D materials, that will produce a dynamic network of superlubric contacts. Structural incompatibility between arrays of colloids allows us to replicate the low friction on bigger length scales and overcome the statistical roughness of real surfaces. We will leverage our breakthrough result to regenerate the 2D coatings themselves during sliding. Through careful design of these coatings, carrier fluid, and the mechanical properties of the core particles, the chemistry of sliding and collective behaviour of the colloids can be controlled. Synthesis and experiments of individual contacts will be combined with visualisation of colloid dynamics during sliding on larger scales and in-site chemical characterisation. These will be combined with multiscale simulations and theory to bridge the different length scales into a coherent framework. The developed ultra-low friction technology will drastically reduce loss of energy, for example in passenger cars (responsible for around 2 billion tones of CO2 per year) and increase the lifetime of parts. It will also enable radically new technologies that are impossible with current lubrication, thus paving the way for e.g. much higher writing speeds in hard disks, where the writing tip will be able to move in full contact with the disk.

Structural superlubricity is currently a lab curiosity limited to micrometer scale and laboratory times. SSLiP will bring this to the macroscale to impact real-life products. The key idea is the use of tribo-colloids: colloidal particles coated in 2D materials, that will produce a dynamic network of superlubric contacts. Structural incompatibility between arrays of colloids allows us to replicate the low friction on bigger length scales and overcome the statistical roughness of real surfaces. We will leverage our breakthrough result to regenerate the 2D coatings themselves during sliding. Through careful design of these coatings, carrier fluid, and the mechanical properties of the core particles, the chemistry of sliding and collective behaviour of the colloids can be controlled. The SSLiP project includes experimental groups from Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, and the Netherlands, where synthesis and experiments of individual contacts will be combined with visualisation of colloid dynamics during sliding on larger scales and in-site chemical characterisation. These will be combined with modelling work at NTNU and Politecnico Milan, in the form multiscale simulations and theory to bridge the different length scales into a coherent framework. The developed ultra-low friction technology will drastically reduce loss of energy, for example in passenger cars (responsible for around 2 billion tones of CO2 per year) and increase the lifetime of parts. It will also enable radically new technologies that are impossible with current lubrication, thus paving the way for e.g. much higher writing speeds in hard disks, where the writing tip will be able to move in full contact with the disk.