Laboratory and statistical evaluations of rheological behaviour of MWCNT-Al2O3 (20:80)/Oil SAE50 as possible modified nano-lubricants

Abstract

In this study, the rheological behavior of hybrid nano-lubricant with the formulation MWCNT-Al2O3 (20:80)/Oil SAE50 was analyzed experimentally and statistically with the aim of check its ability in lubrication process as modified engine oil. In laboratory studies, the type of flow and nano-lubricant viscosity based on independent variables was determined. In the next step, to provide the correlation between the dependent variable and the independent variables and how they relate to each other and also to predict the experimental data, the response surface method (RSM) was used. Experimental observations show that the maximum and minimum viscosity amounts of nano-lubricant were increased and decreased by + 25.3% and − 14.70%, respectively, compared to pure oil. Using the RSM, a three-variable quadratic nonlinear mathematical relation was presented to predict the experimental data with the accuracy R2=0.9988.