Low-viscosity oligoether esters (OEEs) as high-efficiency lubricating oils: Insight on their structure‒lubricity relationship

Hanwen WANG; Ying WANG; Ping WEN; Lin MA; Mingjin FAN; Rui DONG; Chunhua ZHANG

doi:10.1007/s40544-023-0765-3

Friction 2024, 12(6): 1133-1153 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-023-0765-3

Research Article |

Open Access | Issue | Published: 01 December 2023

Low-viscosity oligoether esters (OEEs) as high-efficiency lubricating oils: Insight on their structure‒lubricity relationship

Show Author's Information Hide Author's Information Hanwen WANG^{¹^,²}, Ying WANG^¹, Ping WEN^¹, Lin MA^¹, Mingjin FAN^¹(

), Rui DONG^¹(

), Chunhua ZHANG^²(

)

1 Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Phytochemistry, College of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Baoji University of Arts and Sciences, Baoji 721013, China

2 Key Laboratory of Shaanxi Province for Development and Application of New Transportation Energy, Chang’an University, Xi’an 710064, China

Keywords:

friction, wear, oligoether esters (OEEs), low-viscosity ester, quantitative structure–property relationship (QSPR)

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WANG H, WANG Y, WEN P, et al. Low-viscosity oligoether esters (OEEs) as high-efficiency lubricating oils: Insight on their structure‒lubricity relationship. Friction, 2024, 12(6): 1133-1153. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-023-0765-3

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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Abstract

Development of energy-efficient lubricants is a way to reduce energy consumption for transportation, with the tendency to design molecules that are beneficial in reducing the viscosity of synthetic oils. Oligoether esters (OEEs), as a low-viscosity ester base oil, have characteristics such as simple synthesis and excellent lubrication effect; however, the application of OEEs in tribology field has rarely been investigated. The objective of the present study is to investigate the effect of structure on the lubricating performance of OEEs and to develop a predictive model for OEEs based on quantitative structure‒property relationship (QSPR) through a combination of experiment and statistical modeling. Results showed that glycol chains contribute positively to lubrication with the ether functional groups increasing the sites of adsorption. Compared to branched-chain OEEs, straight-chain OEEs exhibited reduced wear, which was mainly due to the thicker adsorption film formed by the straight-chain structure. Furthermore, carbon films were detected on lightly worn surfaces, indicating that OEEs underwent oxidation during the friction process. Based on the results of principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares (PLS), it could be found that the predictive models of viscosity‒temperature performance, thermal stability performance, coefficient of friction (COF), and wear volume (WV) performed well and robustly. Among them, COF and WV can be best predicted with an R² of about 0.90.

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About this article

Low-viscosity oligoether esters (OEEs) as high-efficiency lubricating oils: Insight on their structure‒lubricity relationship

Show Author's information Hide Author's Information Hanwen WANG^{¹^,²}, Ying WANG^¹, Ping WEN^¹, Lin MA^¹, Mingjin FAN^¹(

), Rui DONG^¹(

), Chunhua ZHANG^²(

)

1 Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Phytochemistry, College of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Baoji University of Arts and Sciences, Baoji 721013, China

2 Key Laboratory of Shaanxi Province for Development and Application of New Transportation Energy, Chang’an University, Xi’an 710064, China

Abstract

Keywords: friction, wear, oligoether esters (OEEs), low-viscosity ester, quantitative structure–property relationship (QSPR)

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Received: 12 January 2023

Revised: 16 February 2023

Accepted: 21 March 2023

Published: 01 December 2023

Issue date: June 2024

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Acknowledgements

The authors are greatly appreciating the financial supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52175156), the Key Research and Development Projects of Shaanxi Province (No. 2021GY-157), and the Young Talent fund of University Association for Science and Technology in Shaanxi (No. 20220615). This work was also supported by the Special Fund for Basic Scientific Research of Central Colleges (Chang’an University) with Nos. 300102221512, 300102221510, and 300102222502.

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