The purpose of this paper is to study the tribology behavior of steel–steel contact under the lubrication of water-based drilling mud with different oleic acid-filled microcapsules as lubricant additives.
A ball-on-disc tribometer was used to evaluate the lubrication properties of the steel–steel contact. The wear tracks of the worn surfaces were observed by a scanning electron microscope.
Results show that the dependence of both friction and wear on the category of additives shares a consistent pattern. In contrast to oleic acid and empty microcapsules, oleic acid-filled microcapsules achieve the best tribological performance which is related to the lubricant effect of oleic acid and the isolation and rolling abilities of microcapsules.
This study provides a helpful method of encapsulated lubricant additives to prolong lubrication performance for steel–steel contact.
This study has applied microcapsules to improve the tribological properties of drilling mud.
The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-08-2019-0320/
