How past success can sometimes hinder future progress

摘要

Past success can make future progress harder for heavy-duty lubricants. But even then, there's been headway made in developing tests for Proposed Category 11 (PC-11), the North American heavy-duty diesel engine oil specification about to debut in late 2016. Today's heavy-duty diesel engines show very low wear levels and carbon deposit build-up. Recent advances in engine hardware and oil quality mean that both wear and build-up are close to the level of random noise, which makes it difficult to measure differences between oils. "Options moving forward would be to either increase the test length or develop a more precise measurement technique. Both wear and deposits can be dramatically affected by oil condition, so, future tests may be required to 'break' the oil and then measure the wear and deposits," said James McCord, manager of the engine lubricants research department at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) based in San Antonio, Texas, U.S.A., which is actively involved in the PC-11 test development.