| Summary: | Moving towards a Green Economy, there is a growing demand to use environmentally friendly tribological systems that has resulted in industries turning towards new mate-rials and water-based lubrication to satisfy their needs. Considering the low viscosity of water, tribological contacts lubricated with it are likely to operate in boundary/mixed lubrication regime for relatively long periods. Naturally, the most critical attributes of contact materials for water lubricated tribological systems are that they should have low friction and high wear resistance under these boundary lubricating conditions, which will inevitably be met during start-up, running, and shut down of a tribological operation.High performing thermoplastics that possess excellent mechanical properties, re-cyclability, low friction, high resistance to wear, corrosion, and chemical solutions are suitable candidates for demanding tribological applications. In research carried out at the Luleå University of Technology on numerous polymers, Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE) has been observed to perform well under water-lubricated con-ditions. However, if these polymers, including UHMWPE, are used in their pure/unfilled state as tribological material in water-lubricated applications, mixed wear and friction performance with unsatisfactory service life has been obtained. One way to improve the properties and performance of a polymer is by adding reinforcements/fillers. The combined addition of micro and nano reinforcement materials to create novel multiscale polymer-based composites has shown great potential in this regard.In this thesis, UHMWPE based multiscale polymer composites for water lubri-cated tribological contacts are developed and evaluated for their mechanical, thermal and tribological properties. The research starts with evaluating the influence of particle size, molecular weight, and processing of various UHMWPE grades on their thermomechani-cal properties and tribological performance. It is found that all the di˙erent ...
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