A new focus on the Walther equation for lubricant viscosity determination

Abstract

Lubricants are widely used in industrial machinery in order to separate solid tribological surfaces and support high loads under severe conditions. In tribological contacts, viscosity plays an important role in the film-forming abilities of the lubricant, but this property is strongly dependent on temperature. Consequently, small variations in temperature cause appreciable variations in the viscosity of lubricating oils. For this reason it is of practical value to be able to predict viscosity changes with temperature. This paper presents a new focus on the Walther equation to determine the viscosity of commercial lubricants at different temperatures. This new approach provides very good correlation with experimental measurements. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.