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In contrast to conventional powertrains from internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV), the tribological performance of powertrains of electric vehicles (EVs) must be further evaluated by considering new critical operating conditions such as electrical environments. The operation of any type of electric motor produces shaft voltages and currents due to various hardware configurations and factors. Furthermore, the common application of inverters intensifies this problem. It has been reported that the induced shaft voltages and currents can cause premature failure problems in tribological components such as bearings and gears due to accelerated wear and/or fatigue. It is ascribed to effects of electric discharge machining (EDM), also named, sparking wear caused by shaft currents and poor or increasingly diminishing dielectric strength of lubricants. A great effort has been done to study this problem in bearings, but it has not yet been the case for gears.

Severe crevice corrosion occurring at the joint of cylinder head/gasket/mono-block from lightweight engines causes accelerated dissolution of lightweight material, in particular, in the cylinder head. It facilitates the linking of cooling vessels with the combustion chambers or oil vessels in both the cylinder head and monoblock. It is conductive to combustion of coolant or oil, and contamination of oil with coolant or vice versa, which is considered as catastrophic engine failure. Since crevice corrosion is dependent of assembly characteristics, coolant and engine operation conditions, full-scale tests are the most frequent alternative for this type of evaluations. Nonetheless, they are very long and expensive, and sometimes, unreliable. Alternatively, the standard procedure ASTM-G78 is widely used to evaluate accelerated crevice corrosion of different metallic materials under certain specified immersion conditions using a corrosive media.

It has widely reported that tribological performance of engine mineral oils (EMOs) can be improved by blending them with vegetable oils (VOs) in certain concentrations. Nonetheless, bio-oils are more susceptible to oxidation than EMOs by thermal ageing, which could be a drawback when they are used in engines comprising high variations of temperature. In this paper, a comparative analysis of tribological performance of an EMO and a blend made of 80%vol. of EMO and 20%vol. of a VO in fresh and aged conditions is given. The VO selected for the blend was Jatropha oil since various advantages reported in literature. EMO and B20 were thermally aged in laboratory approaching actual oxidation and additives depletion caused in EMO used in a car for 7500 km. The effects of ageing on the oils were evaluated by means of oxidation (PAI value), Zinc dialkyldithiophosphates (ZDDPs) depletion and viscosity.

Flouroelastomers and silicone rubbers are commonly employed in static and dynamic seals for automotive applications. In order to prevent premature failures and leakages caused by swelling and/or changes in their mechanical properties, materials for seals are selected according to their compatibility with the environment and fluids involved in the engine operation. Thus, in particular, the use of new fuels and additives in automotive engines requires the assessment of compatibility with common sealing elastomers to prevent failures. Currently, Jatropha oil is being used as a renewable source of fuel in diesel engines for electricity production, transport or agricultural mechanization in various countries. It is used either as biodiesel or as straight vegetable oil (SVO) since it has good heating power and provide exhaust gas with almost no sulfur or aromatic polycyclic compounds. However, the compatibility of elastomers with this SVO has not been investigated yet.

Debris are progressively generated just after wear occurred by the interaction of various mechanical elements inside the engines, steering gear boxes, transmissions, differentials, etc. Besides, debris could interfere with the normal operation of such components generating even more damage in other parts due to three-body abrasion. Hence, dynamic seals are susceptible to interact with very fine debris accumulated in the working lubes. Recently, owing to many test advantages, the micro-scale abrasion test has been extensively used to reproduce three-body abrasion in hard materials, coatings, polymers, etc., however, it has not been before employed for the wear assessment of elastomeric materials. This paper presents an adaptation of the micro-scale test method to study three-body abrasive behavior of an elastomeric dynamic seal (samples extracted from an automotive commercial Acrylonitrile-butadiene NBR rotary seal) under lubricated conditions.