ABSTRACT
There is an increasing demand of monitoring wear of automotive engines to control the severe working conditions in Arab countries represented in the high ambient dust concentrations. In the present work, wear particles, contaminating the lubricating oils of automotive engines running in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, were examined by optical microscope to reveal details of their size, shape and quantity of particles. The visual inspection of those particles by microscope described the wear mechanism, detected the transfer from one wear mechanism to the other and identified the abnormality of wear. The photomicrographs of wear particles provided specific information about the severity of wear and the working conditions. The available information can help in the study of tribological problems such as friction, wear and lubrication as well as developing filtration technology and testing the sliding surfaces inside automotive engines. The generation of large severe wear particles that signal the imminent failure of wearing surface was detected. Those particles were in the form of fatigue and abrasive types, where their increase in the number and size showed that fatigue and abrasive wear mechanisms were progressing rapidly.
Based on the results of the present work, some proposals and recommendations should be considered to develop the oil, air and fuel filters. Besides, proper selection of oil additives will improve the performance of the engine through decreasing both friction and wear.