Technical Committee Lubricants

Mechanical testing of hydraulic fluids II

Since May 1996 the institute for Mechanical Engineering Design 1 of Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg is working on the topic of "Mechanical Testing of Hydraulic fluids". The first project lasting 2 1/2 years was completed in 1999, the results are published as the DGMK report 514. Within these project a testing principle for the "mechanical testing" of hydraulic fluids has been derived, a prototype of a test rig was designed and set in operation at the authors' institute.
This DGMK-report 514-1 describes the results of the second project, which investigates the operating behaviour of the test-rig more in detail. Several test-runs with a total number of 11 different hydraulic fluids show the dependence of the different lubricating behaviour of the tested fluids and their friction and wear behaviour during the tests in a reproducible way.
The aim of the project was to derive a testing principle including the design of a suitable testrig for the mechanical testing of hydraulic fluids. Based on the described results it can be stated that with the developed test it is possible to test the lubricity of hydraulic fluids reproducible and in correlation to field experiences within a relatively short time, so the target was reached.