Hydrocarbon Lubricating Oils with Admixture of Ionic Liquid as Electrorheological Medium

The article describes the results of experimental studies of electrorheological (ER) properties of lubricating oils containing an admixture of an ionic liquid as the electrically active ingredient. The novelty of these studies consists of the use of selected ionic liquids as additives to hydrocarbon oils in order to obtain quasi-homogenous mixtures with electrorheological properties. So far, such studies have not been carried out. Basic research, which consisted in determining the rheological characteristics in the presence of an external direct electric field, was carried out on a specially designed and built stand, which used a modified Brookfield DV-III Ultra viscometer. The conducted research showed that the produced mixtures generated the ER effect in the presence of a direct electric field with an intensity of up to 0.2 kV·mm−1. The tested mixtures showed different electrorheological characteristics. The research was also carried out in the so-called dielectric spectroscopy using the Hewlett Packard HP4192A impedance analyzer. The mechanism of generating and decaying the ER effect was diagnosed by in situ microscopy using the Nikon Eclipse LV100D optical microscope. It was found that the course of the τ = f(γ˙) characteristic of a mixture of hydrocarbon oil with a small admixture of an ionic liquid is mainly influenced by the so-called dielectric properties of the electrically active component, or rather their change as a function of the applied BIAS (DC) voltage. At the same time, the obtained results of the research gave grounds to state that the electrorheological characteristics also depend on many physicochemical properties of the mixture components and on the differentiation of their values e.g., from the difference in viscosity of the insulating base oil and the added ionic liquid, and also from the difference in the value of the surface tension of the base oil and the added ionic liquid. In these studies, it was found that the surface tension of the CJ001 ionic liquid at 25 °C was 26.032 mN·m−1. The surface tension of CJ008 was 28.099 mN·m−1 and that of PAO-6 oil was almost the same, i.e., 27.523 mN·m−1. The first mixture (GP1 + CJ001) showed Bigham characteristics and the second (PAO6 + CJ008) Newtonian, in the second mixture, the viscosity difference of the components was two times lower than in the first one (GP1—12.61 mPa·s, CJ001—552.42 mPa·s and PAO6—47.35 mPa·s, CJ008—327.24 mPa·s).