1ST ASIAN MINING CONGRESS

16-18 January, 2006, Kolkata, India

The Mining Geological and Metallurgical Institute of India (MGMI), Centenary

VARIOUS ASPECTS OF OIL AND ITS ANALYSIS

S. G. Sajay Kumar*

ABSTRACT
A lubricant is the heart of the machine. There is innumerable number of moving parts in a machine.
The gaps between these rotating parts are very often no more than a few thousandths of an inch. It is
this lubricating oil that maintains these gaps safely in order to prevent severe wear between these
mating parts. The author has discussed the service category and performance characteristics of engine
different oils and their development, besides scheduled oil sampling, contamination control, storage
and handling of fresh oil and root cause of failure analysis of a machine break down. In the conclusion
it has been observed that to achieve significant financial as well as quality gain one has to implement
an aggressive proactive maintenance techniques along with effective contamination control programme.

INTRODUCTION
A “good oil” lubricates various components in a
machine and strengthens the life of the machinery.

A “bad oil” acts as a honing material instead of a

lubricant.

Before going into the details of a” good oil” and a

SAE
“bad oil” let us first understand oil certification process, 15W40
symbols, performance standards and many other
techniques and concepts.

LICENSING AND CERTIFICATION

Performance requirements, test methods and limits
are cooperatively established by vehicle and/or engine
Symbols displayed in the oil container and a series
manufacturers (AAMA, EMA) and International
of letters, numbers etc.
Lubrication Standardization & Approval committee
(ILSAC) and technical committees like American Society · Consumers can understand the service category
for Testing and Materials (ASTM), Society of Automotive and performance characteristics of an engine oil.
Engineers (SAE) and American Petroleum Institute (API).
Now, let us see what these symbols mean:
The API Engine Oil Licensing and Certification
System is an oil labeling program that provides a basis The top describes the oil’s performance level
for selecting and recommending an engine oil for both
The center describes the oil’s viscosity
gasoline and diesel engines.
* GMMCO Ltd. Chennai
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The letter “C” followed by another letter and/or
number refers to oil suitable for one or more types of diesel
engines
“C” stands for commercial or compression-ignition
The second letter is generally assigned alphabetically
in order of development
HISTORY OF DIESEL ENGINE OIL
CA – Obsolete – for light duty engines (1940’s &
1950’s)
CB – Obsolete – for moderate duty engines (1949
to 1960)
CC – Obsolete – For engines introduced in 1961
CD – Obsolete – Introduced in 1955. For certain
naturally aspirated and certain turbocharged
engines.
( Repalced by CF oils)
CD II – Obsolete - Introduced in 1987. For two
stroke cycle engines ( replaced by CF-2 oils)
CE – Obsolete – Introduced in 1990. For high
speed, four stroke, naturally aspirated and
turbocharged engines (replaced by CF-4
oils)
CF – 4 oil
CF – 4 oils are suitable for high performance,
four-stroke naturally aspirated and
turbocharged diesel engines
Intended to supercede CE engine oils
CG – 4 oil
Suitable for use in high speed, four stroke
diesel engines
High way & off-highway
Intended to supercede CD, CE & CF-4 oil
Specifically compounded for use with diesel
content less than 0.5%
CH – 4 oil
Effective Dec 1, 1998
For severe duty diesel engine service
Various Aspects of Oil and its Analysis
Designed to meet 1998 exhaust emission
standards
Specifically compounded for use with diesel
content upto 0.5%
Specifically designed to sustain engine
durability under adverse applications that
may stress
Wear control, high temp. stability, soot
handling capacity, non ferrous corrosion,
oxidative thickening, viscosity loss due to
high shear
OEM BRANDED OIL
All of us are aware that a lubricant is the heart of the
machine. There is innumerable number of moving parts
in a machine. The gaps between these rotating parts are
very often no more than a few thousandths of an inch. It
is this lubricating oil that maintains these gaps safely
separated in order to prevent severe wear between these
mating parts.
Nothing affects the performance and durability of a
machine more than the lubricating oil. Right type of
lubricant, proper grade of lubricant, change of lubricant
and filter at recommended intervals are of utmost
importance for better reliability and performance of a
machine. A machine’s lubricating oil requirement can be
best recommended by the original equipment
manufacturer(OEM). Nobody other than the OEM knows
the compatibility between the machine parts and its
lubricating oil. OEM branded oils or OEM recommended
oils must always be used in order to achieve optimum
performance as well as component lives.
There are plenty of examples where it was found that
wrong oil or cheaper oil or improper grade of oil is the
main culprit for catastrophic failure of machines.
Consequently, the owner has to incur huge losses. The
owner tried to achieve savings by using cheap oil and
ultimately, landed up with immense loss, productivity loss,
consequential damages, higher repair cost etc. Hence,
the owner must not compromise with the life of the
machine using cheap oil. This may be explained with the
following example:
S. G. Sajay Kumar 643

Commer Commer CAT depletion and breakdown of base oil are the first two
Performance Test cial cial DEO primary steps for oil degradation. These parameters must
requirements CG-4 CH-4 CH-4
be monitored carefully before any decision on oil change
CAT 3406E CAT Special interval is taken. Let us examine these effects in detail:
Endurance Test

CAT C-12 CAT Special Additive depletion: Antiwear additives, antioxidants,

Endurance Test rust inhibitors, viscosity index improvers, detergents &
CAT 3500 CAT Special dispersants will be exhausted quickly
Series Test
Base oil: Once the additives are lost, the base oil
Piston deposits 1P
and oil control cannot sustain long under such a condition. It will
breakdown, lubricity will be lost and wear & tear will
Ring and T-9
liner wear increase at a significant rate.
Aeration control EOAT The metal surface is not so smooth as we see with
Valve train wear, M-11HST naked eyes. Picture below shows the highly polished
sludge, oil filter
surface of a metal seen under a scanning electron
plugging
microscope with 150 times magnification. This signifies
Viscosity increase T-8, T-8E
from soot
the importance of lubrication and oil change period:

Piston deposits 1N, 1K

and oil control

Cam roller follower RFWT

pin wear

Oxidation Seq. 3E

Copper, lead, CBT

tin corrosion

Foaming control ASTM Foam

Bearing corrosion L-38

Viscosity Bosch Inj.

shear loss

From the above example, it may be concluded that
Caterpillar oil always exceeds the commercial
performance level given any particular grade. So, it is
always advisable to use OEM branded lubricants.
OIL CHANGE INTERVAL
Once the oil is inside the machine, it will break down.
But how fast? That depends on many parameters:
operating practices, environment at the site, temperature,
humidity and above all, chemistry of the oil. Hence, the
oil cannot last for ever. It needs to be changed at specific
intervals recommended by the OEM. Oil drain period
cannot be extended without any basis. Inside the machine,
the oil is exposed to temperature, air, humidity & pressure
– ideal condition for breakdown of the oil. Additive
Surface of a metal seen under a scanning electron microscope 150X
magnification
SCHEDULED OIL SAMPLING
In any wear process, wear particles are generated.
These particles are suspended in the lubricant and can
be analysed quantitatively if proper methods are followed.
This is known as scheduled oil sampling analysis (SOS)
wear particles analysis or wear debris analysis (WDA).
These oil samples are analysed at seheduled interval of
time, eg., 250 hours sampling interval for engine or
crankcase oil and 500 hours interval for hydraulic,
transmission, differential oil.
There are three distinct stages of wear for any
equipment:
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• Break - in wear occurs during the start-up stages of
a new machine. At this stage the wear rate is relatively
high. Mating components adjust with each other.
Friction is high under this condition.
• Normal wear starts when the equipment has been
stabilised. At this stage wear rate gradually reduces
from the break - in wear and maintains more or less
a constant level.
• Abnormal wear occurs as a result of: no oil or wrong
oil, impaired functioning of the components and
maintenance problem. Wear rate becomes faster at
this stage.
• All these three conditions can be pictorially presented
in the following diagram popularly known as bath-
tub curve below:
Break-in Useful life Wear out
Wear rate
Time in service
Various techniques are used for WDA: Atomic
Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS), Analytical Ferrography,
Inductively coupled plasma (ICP) spectroscopy, particle
counting. Each method has its own merits and demerits.
For example, AAS, although a very popular technique
since early 1940, cannot detect metal particles above 8
microns in size. It cannot detect nonmetallic particles.
Particle counting, on the other hand, is a catchall test. It
detects all types of particles upto 200 microns. However,
it cannot distinguish metallic and nonmetallic particles.
Appendix 1 shows various substances with approximate
sizes.
These wear metals, naturally, are generated from the
various components inside the machine. Knowing the
metallurgy of the components it is possible to pinpoint
the origin of the metal particles. An example will give a
clearer picture:
Various Aspects of Oil and its Analysis
TREND ANALYSIS
Interpretation of SOS results must always be done
after trending the results. Trend analysis is a most effective
means for meaningful explanation of the happenings
inside the machine. Principally, all parameters discussed
can be trended through regular oil analysis. For this one
needs to know details of the machine: make, model, make/
grade of oil, HMR/SMU (hour meter reading / standard
metering unit), hours the oil in service, application of the
machine, environment (temperature, humidity, dirty/clean)
etc. Effective diagnosis can be made only when one
carries out the trend analysis. For example, main and rod
bearing wear can be indicated by increase in lead followed
by decrease in lead and consequent increase in copper
and tin. This is highly rationale because initially the soft
lead overlay is worn out and then copper material is
exposed. Without this trend through regular oil analysis,
it is virtually impossible to explain the high copper content
in the oil. Copper might originate from thrust washer,
bearing, bushing and oil cooler, all of which contains
copper.
VISUAL IDENTIFICATION
• A skilled analyst can assess many things comparing
the colours of the oil samples. Interesting examples
investigated at our SOS Lab. are shown below:
Fresh engine oil at left, Profuse dirt ingression at RH,
high abrasion, high friction,
was heavily oxidised after high temperature resulting in
dark colour & oil
150 hours only and the breakdown. Note the Al: Si:: 1:3.3,
colour became classic example of
dark as shown in the dirt entry.
right container.
S. G. Sajay Kumar
CONTAMINATION CONTROL
Let us start this topic by asking a question, “How do
you know whether your lubricating oil is good or bad?” or
in a slightly modified way, “How do you know whether
your lubricating oil is clean or dirty?”
Most of the time it is not possible visually to assess
the cleanliness of a fluid. If the oil is dirty, then it is said to
be contaminated. A contaminant is something, which does
not belong to the system. For example, if water is detected
in the oil then we say that oil is contaminated with water.
Water does not belong to the system. There are two types
of contaminants:
• Particulate (or mechanical) contaminants, which
include dirt, weld spatter, metal particles, rag fibres,
paint etc.
• Nonparticulate or chemical contaminants tend to
react chemically with the lubricant, thus, reducng its
lubrication performance. These include moisture, air,
water, heat and other chemicals in the oil.
Consequently, the oil breaks down leading to overall
impaired performance.
In today’s stringent operating environments,
prevention of contaminant ingression is of immense
importance to extend the life of a component. Amount of
contaminants can be quantified by an instrument, which
is known as a Particle Counter. A particle counter can
count the number of particles per mililitre of the oil and
these are expressed in terms of two - factor ISO codes.
The first factor indicates the number of particles larger
than 5 microns size. The second factor represents the
number of particles larger than 15 micron size. Most
harmful particles are in the range of 5 to 15 micron size.
Every step in the ISO code indicates the fluid is twice as
dirty (or clean) as the next code. If the number of
particles greater than 5 microns is 1000 and that
greater than 15 micron is 100, then fluid cleanliness
in terms of ISO code will be ISO 17/14.
Optical particle counters work either on the principle
of light blockage or light scattering by the contaminants
in the oil. Used engine oil is obviously excluded. The
particle counter can track all ranges of contaminant
particles present in the oil. However, it cannot distinguish
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types (metallic or nonmetallic) and compositions of
particles.
For any industrial oil (except engine oil), cleanliness
must be quantified in terms of particle counts conforming
to ISO codes. Next step, which logically follows is to
exclude the contaminants through filtration. Filtration
system is an integral part of effective contamination control
program. It is often said that cost of removing a gram of
dirt is only about 10 percent of what it will cost once it is
allowed to enter in the oil. It is worthwhile to mention here
the efficiency of a filter, which is very critical yet, is less
understood.
STORAGE AND HANDLING OF FRESH OIL
• Contamination control program must start from the
fresh oil. The most commonly used container for
storage of lubricants is the steel drum. A new steel
drum if not stored in a climate controlled area can
allow significant amount of dirt and water ingression
as it breathes with change in ambient temperature.
Properly designed and sealed containers offer
significant ingression prevention capabilities as
opposed to drums. Use of hand pumps should be
minimized, as these are difficult to store clean and
can cause cross-contamination unless a dedicated
pump is used for each individual product. These
drums and bulk containers should be fitted with
desiccant breathers that filter out dirt & moisture as
the container breathes over the course of time. New
as well as used oil barrels must be kept in a vertical
position with a barrel cover at the top as shown in
the following picture.
One must not assume that fresh oil by default has
achieved target cleanliness level. When this does not
happen one must deploy an off-line filtration system along
with a particle counter to monitor the cleanliness level
until it conforms to ISO code. This procedure may be
applied for any type of oil.
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Effect of dirt ingression
• The following graph shows how dirt ingression affects
the wear rate:
Data generated in SOS Lab, TIL
There is almost a direct variation of iron with silicon
after performing several analyses of an engine oil. After
each oil change, the concentrations are diluted which are
displayed in the graph. This means that contaminant
ingression (dirt in this case) into the system could not be
prevented and consequently, the components could not
be protected from wearing out.
With continuation of this scenario, components’ life
must be dramatically reduced. Without a suitably designed
contamination control system in place, life of a machine
cannot be enhanced and the primary objective of
contamination control program will be completely
defeated.
PROACTIVE MAINTENANCE AND
CONTAMINATION CONTROL
Avoiding sudden failure of any machinery should be
the prime objective of any maintenance professional.
Proactive maintenance aims at recognizing the symptoms
of impending machine failures much earlier. This allows
the maintenance personnel to make proper plan for
shutdown (as opposed to sudden breakdown). Other
consequential damages inside the machine can be
prevented. This has significant impact on the maintenance
cost.
Nippon steel, in early 1980, had conducted a pilot
program on more than 150 hydraulic systems. The
program included upgradation of existing filtration systems
Various Aspects of Oil and its Analysis
along with fluid cleanliness campaign. Significant results,
in a nutshell, are:
• 50% reduction in bearing purchase
• 90%reduction in pump overhauls
• 83% reduction in oil consumption
• 90% reduction in tribological failures
Oil analysis is both proactive and predictive in nature.
Whereas, predictive maintenance aims at monitoring oil
condition, wear debris etc, proactive maintenance aims
at monitoring these parameters as well as eliminating the
root causes of failure. Proactive maintenance saves
money by reducing the number of failure events per year.
Predictive maintenance reduces the impact of each event.
About a couple of year ago, a Canadian oil refinery
conducted a research on maintenance costs. The results
shown in the following figure were based on the time
duration when the maintenance practices were entirely
reactive and finally followed by proactive.
The costs were shown within these types of
maintenance program. The costs reflected were
expressed in dollars/horse power/year. The figure shows
that the cost incurred by adopting proactive maintenance
strategy is lowest than that involved in any other
maintenance techniques. Any maintenance team can
detect the failure signatures through oil analysis and other
conditions.
Three basic steps must be closely followed for proper
implementation of proactive maintenance strategy:
• Target: A target must be set for any subassembly.
For example, a machine has been picked up and a
S. G. Sajay Kumar
target has been set so that its hydraulic oil must not
contain more than 200 ppm water.
• Exclusion: Next step is to identify all potential
sources of water ingression into the oil. These
sources (seals, breathers, vents, reservoir
condensation, leaky water cooler etc, must be
modified or redesigned to minimise entry of water.
• Detection: Finally, water content in the hydraulic oil
must be monitored frequently to check whether it has
crossed the target.
This technique can be extended to any other
parameters, e.g., silicon content or particle count etc. To
achieve this, contamination control program must be
aggressively implemented inside the plant. If water and
dirt ingression can be arrested, component life will be
significantly enhanced. This is shown in the following
graph:
To achieve 100% rated life of a bearing, water content
in the lubricant as low as 100 ppm may be allowed. When
the water content exceeds 100 ppm, rated life is
remarkably reduced as displayed in the figure. When the
water content is brought down below 100 ppm, rated life
may be significantly increased. An exponential equation
has been developed by means of which the rated life of a
bearing can be estimated if the water content can be
experimentally determined.
ROOT CAUSE FAILURE ANALYSIS
One has to ask “Why” as many times as possible
until he or she gets the underlying causes. Only then a
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logic tree can be successfully developed and the chain of
events can be identified. Let us put forward a simple
example as shown in the following figure:
However, the story is not yet complete. The logic tree
does not end here. Let us put a little more thought to the
last portion of the above analysis. Why did people decide
to store the oil in that way? What about the systems in
which people work? What about the systems, which
allowed the people to follow the procedures which are
unscientific? The answers which address all these basic
questions are referred to as organizational system roots
or the latent roots.
The bearing failed
Inadequate lubrication
The oil broke down
The oil was heavily contaminated
with dust and water
Fresh oil was stored
in dusty, humid
conditions with the
bungs open
Inadequate storage No maintenance No condition
No condition monitoring
monitoring
practice strategy was followed technique
technique was adopted
was adopted
For any RCFA, the last step must be a documented
RCFA report containing detailed analytical results, in-depth
discussion of results, conclusions and definite corrective
actions recommendations.
CONCLUSIONS
Now, going back to the first paragraph of this article,
a good oil may be defined as clean, dry and fit for use,
whereas, a bad oil lacks lubricity, is full of contaminants.
Oil analysis or any other condition based monitoring
technique cannot do miracle. The analytical results must
be effectively integrated with maintenance activities. It is
maintenance people who will decide how much dirt (or
water) can be tolerated by a specific machine. Frequent
oil change or filter change can never ever be able to
enhance the life of a component. Oil analysis (or any
condition monitoring technique) is designed for continuous
improvement. These techniques must be deployed
regularly and religiously.
Cleanliness targets must be quantitative, achievable
and must have a high signal - to - noise ratio. Oil sampling
procedures must be as perfect as possible. Oil sampling
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frequency must be right. Inadequate sampling frequency
can never be able to detect a potential failure. Aggressive
proactive maintenance techniques along with effective
contamination control program must be in place to make
significant financial as well as quality gain at minimum
cost or risk to existing operations.
Testing of lubricant will help assess the condition of
the machine as well as the condition of the oil. Condition
of the oil is also of primary importance because a degraded
oil can never be able to produce adequate film thickness
required to prevent metal-to-metal contact.
The ideal situation is to integrate oil analysis with
vibration analysis. Recently, Australian researchers
noticed that vibration analysis very effectively identifies
the presence of fractured gear tooth. Oil analysis or
particle counting simply doesn’t work because of the large
Various Aspects of Oil and its Analysis
size of the debris generated. Both techniques are required
to determine effectively the root cause of failure. Above
all, condition monitoring and failure assessment is a game
of guess. Through the use of multiple technologies,
therefore, an effective diagnosis of failure conditions and
more confident recommendations can be put forward.
Without proper condition monitoring techniques, a
high-value machine is like a lion cub: defenseless and
vulnerable. In this situation, all a maintenance professional
can do is to keep on changing oil and filters. Severity of
wear problems, severity of contaminants ingression,
criticality of the situation, pending failures, root cause of
failure can never be conducted and identical failures will
be repeated frequently. All these have awesome effect
on the bottom line of the organization.