Thursday, May 19, 2011
Oil is lots of ball bearings?
Oil is lots of ball bearings?
I was wondering what a correct analogy for lubricating oil was?
Clearly ball bearings between two parallel plates acts as a lubricant, provided there is a 'not full' single layer, and they are all the same size. Everything rolls around happily and does not crash into each other. Cylinders are fine if the movement is basically in one direction ( as per pyramid building.) Fundamentally no two surfaces rub in different directions.
But I go a bit hazy if there are many layers of balls between the surfaces. There must be rubbing of surfaces travelling in different directions. I would guess this is not so good, although each ball might not have to travel round very much.
I guess the ultimate result is like a ship travelling through water.
Maybe what one wants is a mixture of platelets and ball bearings, so that you have multiple layers of flat surfaces each lubricated with a single layer of balls. Any one of these layers could provide the full motion.
I guess the balls have to be sufficiently large to avoid electrical forces between the plates dominating, but could this actually work in a nanotechnological sense. Graphene and buckyballs?
Anyway, I am not sure how real lubricating oil fits into this analogy. Maybe it is only trying to neutralise the electrical forces between plates and not much else. Maybe filling in the rough surface a little?
Perhaps we will see people putting more and more funny nanoparticles into the traditional oil.
martinW
I was wondering what a correct analogy for lubricating oil was?
Clearly ball bearings between two parallel plates acts as a lubricant, provided there is a 'not full' single layer, and they are all the same size. Everything rolls around happily and does not crash into each other. Cylinders are fine if the movement is basically in one direction ( as per pyramid building.) Fundamentally no two surfaces rub in different directions.
But I go a bit hazy if there are many layers of balls between the surfaces. There must be rubbing of surfaces travelling in different directions. I would guess this is not so good, although each ball might not have to travel round very much.
I guess the ultimate result is like a ship travelling through water.
Maybe what one wants is a mixture of platelets and ball bearings, so that you have multiple layers of flat surfaces each lubricated with a single layer of balls. Any one of these layers could provide the full motion.
I guess the balls have to be sufficiently large to avoid electrical forces between the plates dominating, but could this actually work in a nanotechnological sense. Graphene and buckyballs?
Anyway, I am not sure how real lubricating oil fits into this analogy. Maybe it is only trying to neutralise the electrical forces between plates and not much else. Maybe filling in the rough surface a little?
Perhaps we will see people putting more and more funny nanoparticles into the traditional oil.
martinW
