Short test procedures versus long time tests: new aspects

Lubricants are very complex mixtures of components. To predict their behaviour over a long time it is necessary to make a lot of machinery element tests. This paper tries to give an insight into how lubricants can be estimated in their structure by IR‐microscopy and how this procedure could lead to a short prediction of their long‐time behaviour in time‐ and cost‐expansive machinery element testing.