Study On Tribological Properties Of Synthetic Nanometer Magnesium Silicate Hydroxide

Magnesium silicate hydroxide (MSH) as lubricant additives can make the friction and lubrication media react situ on the surface of high hardness and wear a protective film to compensate for wear. Compared with natural powder, synthetic MSH powder possesses preferable advantages in performance, size, purity and so on. In this paper, the characterization and tribological properties of the MSH by hydrothermal synthesized for 12hours were studied through different means.The MSH powder owned clear contour and uniform size, and the particle size can reach to 100nm. It was founded that the main phase of powder was antigorite which had a high degree of crystallinity and there was almost no impurities.Four ball testing machine and SRV testing machine were used to investigate the tribological properties of MSH powder. The study suggested that MSH powder with high surface activity easily formed a reaction film on friction surface, which significantly reduced the wear. But it led to the increase of friction coefficient. The MSH powder can effectively improve the extreme pressure properties of lubricating oil so as to expand the scope of work load.This paper discussed the effects of lubricating oil, test load and rotational speed on the tribological properties of synthetic MSH. The finding showed that MSH conflicted with some commercial lubricating oil which contained anti-wear additives. Synthetic MSH is suitable for base oil, and the best adding content varies with the type of oil. The greater test load or rotational speed, the greater the reduction rate of the lubricating oil containing MSH. That is, synthetic powder performance better under high load or high speed condition.In order to solve the problem of friction coefficient increase caused by MSH, molybdenum disulfide and graphite and multi-walled carbon nanotubes(MWNTs) were respectively coupled to MSH powder by different content. The results showed that molybdenum disulfide in the lubricating oil couldn’t reduce the friction coefficient and it was noneffective to combine with MSH. The friction coefficient is reduced with the increase of the content of nano graphite and MWNTs in the lubricating oil. The two respectively coupling MSH can effectively reduce the friction coefficient.The present research work analyzed the performance of synthetic MSH powder as lubricant additives and initially solved the problem of increasing friction, which provided a theoretical and experimental support for research efforts and industrial applications.