An Investigation on the Tribological Performance of Carbon nanotube (CNT) as a Lubricant Additive to Locally Made Engine Oil

Lubricating oil is manufactured with the purpose to minimize friction and to control
wear in machine elements such as gears, bearings, springs and beams. The
components of machines nowadays become more complex in order to improve the
production rate. These machines required lubricant for protection in order to avoid
damages and giving stability in performance of machine. With the addition of
additives to the lubricant, it makes the lifetime of the machine even longer. The
additive would improve the performance of lubricating ability by enhancing the
desirable tribology properties. This project is concerning on the usage of Carbon
nanotube (CNT) as the potential additive to be added to the locally made lubricant
i.e. MACH 5. The purpose of adding the CNT into the lubricant is to enhance the
lubricant properties in terms of providing less friction for a sliding contact. Initially,
this project starts with gathering information on internal combustion engine,
lubricant and the additive candidate; CNT. For this project to prove that CNT might
be the next candidate for lubricant additive, there will be two types of experiment to
be conducted throughout this project i.e. viscosity test and four balls wear test.
Viscosity test is to measures a lubricant's resistance to flow at certain temperature
and is considered as oil's most important physical property. Fourball weartest on the
other hand is the industry's standard test method for measuring the wearpreventive
characteristics of a lubricant. The smaller the average wear scar, the better the
protection provided by the lubricant. The wear scar surface resulted form the four
ball wear test is later to be analyzed with the scanning electron microscope (SEM)
machine. At the end of this project CNT is aimed as the solution that could provide
less friction to the surface contact and capable to withstand extreme pressure.