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Rubber conveyor belts are an important part of the transport chain in many industries, ranging from food processing to steel mills. In this context, it is important to employ scrapers, which remove adhering goods from the belts and reduce loss of these resources during transport. The tribological contact between belt and scraper is of high importance as this often is a source of wear and unintended energy consumption. In this work, the interaction between scrapers and belt was investigated by utilizing a pin-on-disk setup with and without abrasive intermedia. A strong dependence of friction and wear on the alignment angle between pin and belt was proven by the investigations. An orthogonal setup caused the highest coefficient of friction, but the lowest wear, while an increasing deviation from the 90° alignment, resulted in an inverse trend. Also, the geometrical shape and size of the abrasive determined wear, as larger, sharper particles enhanced wear. Abrasive particles likewise influence the tribological contact between pin and belt by reducing the friction compared with the 2-body contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ionic liquids are getting increased attention due to their potential use as additives or lubricants. One of parameters that influence their performance is anion alkyl chain length. Three chain lengths in imidazolium sulfate ionic liquids were varied in three different types of tests in order to study the friction performance in all lubrication regimes at different shear rates. Results show significant effect of alkyl chain length on friction behaviour and surface topography. The shortest chain length ionic liquid had the poorest friction performance whilst longer alkyl chain lengths performed significantly better, which was evidenced by the electrical contact resistance. Although friction behaviour was not generally reduced with ionic liquid mixtures, clear tribological improvement was observed in high shear conditions depending on alkyl chain length. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis revealed correlation between ionic liquid chemistry and surface topography of samples after the experiments, with significantly increased roughness for short chain ionic liquid mixture. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Ionic liquids are low-melting-point salts composed entirely of ions, and many of them are liquids at room temperature. In recent years, studies have indicated that they might be good candidates for lubricants, either in neat or additive form. In this work, a sulfate-based ionic liquid with a pyrollidinium cation was studied as neat lubricant and as additive for glycerol in lubrication of steel-steel contacts. Glycerol was chosen as the base oil because of its high polarity, which allows full miscibility with polar ionic liquids. Tests were performed on an oscillating friction and wear tribometer. The coefficients of friction and wear were measured. The tests were run at room temperature, 50 °C, 100 °C and 150 °C. By using profilometry, optical microscopy, scanning electron microscope and atomic force microscopy (AFM) analyses, it was shown that the ionic liquid plays an important role in the friction and wear reduction, as well as in the smoothening of the worn surface. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]