Project
Investigation of lubricating fluids with combined rheological and rheo-optical techniques
This PhD aims at understanding the role of polymeric additives in lubricants on the rheological behaviour and lubricating properties. While the rheological properties of lubricants can and have been accessed in the past with standard rheological investigation tools, it is in particular the high shear behaviour that is relevant for most applications that is, however, often outside the deformation rate range that can be applied with commercial rheometers. Within this project, the material functions of lubricants will be accessed via the (rheo)-optical investigation of flow-birefringence and -dichroism of model lubrication fluids, utilising a novel flow cell that enables the simultaneous determination of the rheo-mechanical and rho-optical material functions over variating gap distances in a lubrication flow field