Gear Oil Micropitting Evaluation

During the last decade, industrial gear manufacturers, particularly in Europe, began to require documentation of micropitting performance before approving a gear oil for use in their equipment. The development of micropitting resistant lubricants has been limited both by a lack of understanding of the mechanism by which certain lubricant chemistry promotes micropitting and by a lack of readily available testing for evaluation of the micropitting resistance of lubricants. This paper reports results of two types of testing: (1) the use of a roller disk machine to conduct small scale laboratory studies of the effects of individual additives and combinations of additives on micropitting and (2) a helical gear test used to study micropitting performance of formulated gear oils.