Development of a versatile mechanical property testing platform

Eco-friendly and bio-degradable lubricants and additives have gained tremendous attention in recent years due to sustainability awareness. Implementing green solutions for oil and lubricants has become mandatory due to high regulatory controls. To meet these requirements, extensive tribology tests are needed. Tribology tests usually need to mimic real situations in terms of load, speed and lubrication. However, current tribology tools are designed for a specific experiment only such as four-ball testing for lubricant; making it difficult for Tribologists to assess different aspects of an object under scrutiny without multiple testing tools. Other drawbacks include low usage of each tool, waste of lab space, tests cannot be done on the same location or same material, making it difficult to correlate different properties which is critical in understanding the mechanism behind. In this article, we report the development of a versatile testing platform which covers most standard tests ranging from lubricant, coating reliability, friction and wear on mechanical parts to tribology test under controlled environment such as temperature, gas and electrochemical environment.