Originally Posted By: Tempest
Nope, seen it all before and it is still all opinion.
Well, yes, of course it is. However, let me turn it around for you. It's pretty easy to shoot darts at somebody else's observations, but let me ask you a question or two. What evidence do you have that synthetics offer more protection against wear than conventionals? And do you have any evidence to suggest that Redline is not a superior oil? (Something not sourced from one of their competitors would carry weight.) And out of curiosity, who is the number cruncher you referred to in your first paragraph?
I will go out on a limb here and disagree with your comments about boundary conditions however. I do believe that the physical resistance of the oil barrier to being breached is a critical element in overall wear protection. Consider this simple illustration. In any instance of boundary lubrication you could plot a curve, showing pressure vs. time, that would peak at a certain point. At the peak, any oil film would presumably have been breached and AW will be the primary method of protection for the metal surfaces. However, there will be a point on the y-axis, below the peak, at which the oil film's physical protection will give way to that AW protection (a slight simplification, but nevertheless illustrative). The total area under that curve will correspond to the wear potential of that boundary lubrication event, but the point on the y-axis at which the oil's physical barrier is breached will correspond to the oil's film strength under whatever conditions are present, which we can approximate with HTHS. It is easy to see that a slight raising of that y-axis point will raise the level at which the final, molecular-thickness, AW-barrier needs to come into play (activated by frictional heat on the breakdown of the oil barrier itself, of course), and would reduce the area under the curve very significantly. In fact, it stands to reason that some boundary lubrication events would be eliminated altogether with a sufficiently high HTHS, while all would be reduced in intensity.
In other words, it must be a combination of the oil's physical characteristics and the chemical AW layer that work to prevent wear, and the former must necessarily have a major impact on the need for the latter.
Nope, seen it all before and it is still all opinion.
Well, yes, of course it is. However, let me turn it around for you. It's pretty easy to shoot darts at somebody else's observations, but let me ask you a question or two. What evidence do you have that synthetics offer more protection against wear than conventionals? And do you have any evidence to suggest that Redline is not a superior oil? (Something not sourced from one of their competitors would carry weight.) And out of curiosity, who is the number cruncher you referred to in your first paragraph?
I will go out on a limb here and disagree with your comments about boundary conditions however. I do believe that the physical resistance of the oil barrier to being breached is a critical element in overall wear protection. Consider this simple illustration. In any instance of boundary lubrication you could plot a curve, showing pressure vs. time, that would peak at a certain point. At the peak, any oil film would presumably have been breached and AW will be the primary method of protection for the metal surfaces. However, there will be a point on the y-axis, below the peak, at which the oil film's physical protection will give way to that AW protection (a slight simplification, but nevertheless illustrative). The total area under that curve will correspond to the wear potential of that boundary lubrication event, but the point on the y-axis at which the oil's physical barrier is breached will correspond to the oil's film strength under whatever conditions are present, which we can approximate with HTHS. It is easy to see that a slight raising of that y-axis point will raise the level at which the final, molecular-thickness, AW-barrier needs to come into play (activated by frictional heat on the breakdown of the oil barrier itself, of course), and would reduce the area under the curve very significantly. In fact, it stands to reason that some boundary lubrication events would be eliminated altogether with a sufficiently high HTHS, while all would be reduced in intensity.
In other words, it must be a combination of the oil's physical characteristics and the chemical AW layer that work to prevent wear, and the former must necessarily have a major impact on the need for the latter.
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