Scientists from University of Luxembourg and HYDAC win STLE Edmond E. Bisson Best Paper Award
The Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE) is the premier technical society serving the needs of more than 13,000 individuals and 250 companies and organizations that comprise the tribology and lubrication engineering business sector. Lubrication Engineering relates to the reduction of friction and wear between relatively moving parts. The term tribology describes the study of interacting moving surfaces. Studies estimate that as much as one-third of all usable, device-produced energy is lost to friction and wear. This costs industry and consumers billions each year. In addition to energy waste, friction and wear greatly affect product reliability, maintainability, safety, life and environmental factors.
The Edmond E. Bisson Award honors a former STLE Editor-in-Chief, who was instrumental in establishing STLE’s reputation as a technical publisher. The award is given to scientists for the best-written contribution published by the society in the prior year.
Within a cooperative research and development project between the University of Luxembourg and HYDAC targeting to optimize filter coating materials the researchers Johannes Staudt (former PhD student of the University of Luxembourg and now employer of HYDAC), John Duchowski (HYDAC) and Stephan Leyer (University of Luxembourg) published the paper with the title: Prevention of Electrostatic Charge Generation in Filtration of Low-Conductivity Oils by Surface Modification of Modern Filter Media, in the Journal Tribology Transactions (https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utrb20). The paper has been chosen for the 2022 STLE Edmond E. Bisson Award by the Society’s Awards Committee.
The authors have been acknowledged for their technical publishing achievements on May 16 2022 during the awards ceremony portion of the 2022 STLE Annual Meeting & Exhibition in Orlando, Florida.
Numerous modern hydraulic and lubricating systems tend to exhibit higher tendencies toward the Electro Static Charge or Discharge (ESC/ESD) phenomena as a result of higher flow velocities, advanced filter element design based on synthetic materials and finer filter porosities with higher filtration efficiencies. Some of the ESC/ESD incidents already reported include highly detrimental effects such as damage to the system components, including electronic sensors and transducers, embrittlement and holes being burned into the filter media layers, where even arcing and deflagrations have been observed in the system reservoirs. Despite all of these occurrences, no clear-cut solution to this issue has been proposed due to the lack of understanding of the fundamental physical principles governing the process. Instead, attempts were made to resolve the issue through roughshod and haphazardly applied half measures aimed at alleviating the symptoms instead of addressing the root cause. The solution proposed in the paper is based on the fundamental physical principles derived from the reported experimental data.
In contrast to the previously proposed mechanisms that focused predominantly on fluid and filter material conductivities, new evidence strongly suggests that the relative placement of the substrates in the triboelectric series must be taken into account. The positions occupied in the triboelectric series account for the donor/acceptor tendencies exhibited by the materials when brought close together in close proximity. Nevertheless, this behavior is only an outward manifestation of the deeper underlying characteristics that include material surface energies and, looking even deeper, the associated electron work functions of the interacting materials. Herein we provide several examples of the enhanced understanding of the ESC/ESD phenomena as they occur in the course of filtration of hydraulic and lubricating fluids through modern filter elements constructed of synthetic glass fiber and polymer materials. The proposed solution has already been adopted by several major turbine original equipment manufacturers. It is already being employed in a broad number of vastly different applications that range from turbine lubrication to excavator hydraulic systems to snowcat units operating in extremely harsh environments.