WTC2005-63308 A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF TRIBOPOLYMERIZATION AS AN ANTIWEAR MECHANISM

ABSTRACT By tribopolymerization, we mean the planned, intentional, and continuous formation of protective polymeric films on tribological surfaces by the use of minor concentrations of selected monomers capable of forming polymer films "in situ" by polycondensation or addition polymerization. The approach involves the design of molecules which will form polymeric surface films in critical regions of boundary lubrication. The concept has been shown to be effective in reducing wear with ceramics as well as metals in both liquid and vapor phase applications. The purpose of this paper is threefold, namely: 1. To review our key fundamental research on the topic of tribopolymerization, including more recent views based on measurements of triboelectron emission. 2. To summarize the applications of this concept to a variety of industrial problems, including the use of the compounds in fuels as well as in areas in which environmental issues are important. 3. To briefly outline future plans for fundamental research on tribopolymerization, including theoretical and experimental studies to examine the roles of surface temperature, triboelectron emission, and catalysis on surface polymerization

Low-Energy Triboelectrons and Tribochemistry - A Review

This article was published in Tribology Science and Application

Triboemission Phenomena and Possible Connections to Tribocatalysis

This paper was published in the Proc. of the European Conf. on Tribology

Triboemission Phenomena: Electronic and Photonic Output During Friction Contact and Its Connections to Surface Processes

This paper was published in the Proc. of the TMS 2012 Annual Meeting

Development of an Instrument for Studies of Charged Triboemission Transport in Gas Atmospheres

This paper was published in the Proc. of STLE 2011 Annual Meeting

A Deterministic-Chaos Study of Electron Triboemission Outputs

The authors have carried out extensive measurements of electron triboemission from the scratching of ceramics and semiconductors that are briefly summarized in this paper. Analysis of the frequency-domain distribution of typical triboemission count-pulse outputs suggested that their occurrence is not Poisson’s (e.g., it is not random). This paper presents a study on the hypothesis of deterministic-chaos origin for triboemission data. Electron triboemission outputs from the ceramics alumina, sapphire, silicon nitride, and the semiconductors Si and Ge are analyzed by means of extracting deterministic-chaos metrics. The results suggest that the low-level electron-emission components may be described by multiplicative processes of random initiation, while the superimposed large burst-type components may be of deterministic origin