Project Start: Gear Wear Test Gear Oils

On 01.07.2019 the DGMK project 799 "Evaluation of Gear Oils for Mobile and Stationary Drives under Risk of Continuous Wear" started.

The service life of slow-running gear drives is often limited by wear on the teeth. To calculate the service life, it is necessary to determine the wear characteristics of a comparable tribological system experimentally in advance using the appropriate lubricant. The best information can be expected from application-related component tests such as the DGMK-FZG gear oil wear test C/0.05/90:120/12. This test has not yet been standardised and is only known to a limited number of users.

In this project, the accuracy of such a test procedure shall be assured. For this purpose, the main factors influencing the accuracy will be identified and the existing wear categories for modern oils of different application areas will be checked. Furthermore, the differentiability of the wear protection effect of low-viscosity, high-alloy oils as well as high-viscosity, low-alloy oils is to be improved in order to be able to reliably evaluate high-performance lubricants, e.g. for automotive or industrial gears.

In order to make the results of such a test available to a wide range of applications in gear design, the third step is to fundamentally expand the knowledge of the wear characteristics of the typical gear material combinations hard/hard and hard/soft. Possibilities of revaluating the wear characteristics of both material pairings will be examined.

The main result is a standardised lubricant test method that can be used in the development of gear oils. In addition, the wear life, especially of large gears, is made accessible to a more reliable calculation for the first time. This reduces considerable damage risks of corresponding drives and increases the competitiveness of SMEs in the lubricant and gear industry.

Research Center:

Chair for Machine Elements
Forschungsstelle für Zahnräder und Getriebebau (FZG)
Technical University Munich