Lubricant Analysis as the Most Useful Tool in the Proactive Maintenance Philosophies of Machinery and its Components

Condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of engineering systems are critical for the stable and reliable operation in various areas as mobile technology (primarily agricultural, forestry, mining and construction machinery), railways, airlines and large fleets. Thus, to achieve a satisfactory level of reliability for the life of a machine, proactive maintenance strategy is the only key. This means that the application of classical reliability methods suitable for components with sudden failures can be complemented by technical diagnostic methods which have the potential to provide the information about the system condition. In this article we focus on the diagnostic signal related to the used oil – tribodiagnostic measures and is an interesting theoretical item related to the evaluation of the quality of lubricants in the aspect of operation. This is because the oil is in direct contact with single parts of the assessed technical systems. Results tests were reviewed and derived from various parameters of lubricants and their limits that highlight the condition and state of the lubricants under varying categories which include, physiochemical, elemental (wear), contamination and additive analysis.