Investigations of railway wagons fitted with rolling-element bearings have shown damage to the bearings from the passage of electric current. This also occurs in railway wagons without an electric energy consumption of their own, because of residual currents from electric locomotives. This phenomenon gives rise to technical, financial, and even safety problems. This paper reviews research in the field of rolling-element bearings exposed to electric currents. The paper also reports on an ongoing study undertaken to understand the mechanism of current flow and the role of lubricants in the associated damage, and to identify the possibilities of minimising bearing damage. The obvious solution to this problem is to use optimised greases, i.e., with high electrical conductivity and good lubricating ability. In the preliminary work reported here a number of greases for railway use were tested to determine their electrical conductivity in static and dynamic situations. These tests were performed using specially designed apparatus, and significant initial information about the electrical properties of greases has been obtained in this research, for example, that there is a correlation between the electrical conductance under static and dynamic conditions. All the greases tested showed comparatively high resistivity values, which could be one explanation for the bearing damage observed.

The ability to measure lubricant film thickness in elastohydrodynamic point contacts was greatly improved when the method of interferometry was introduced in the late 1960s. Constant refinements of the technique have made it possible to measure the thickness of thin films with an accuracy of a few nanometers. In order to further develop the technique and provide a tool for advanced lubricant experiments, a Ball and Disc Apparatus was developed. The aim was to accomplish an apparatus with an open architecture for easy expansion and the ability to use several sub-methods for film thickness determination.

The properties of a number of common lubricants have been measured, namely the viscosity, elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) friction coefficient, density, thermal conductivity and heat capacity per unit volume. These properties have been measured within relatively broad pressure and temperature ranges. The lubricants tested were naphthenic and paraffinic mineral oils, blends of these, polyalphaolefins and a polyglycol. Physical--empirical expressions have been developed upon the basis of the measurement results and a number of lubricant constants, or lubricant parameters, have been determined for each lubricant. These expressions can be used in engineering computational tools for lubrication analysis. The use of such analyses is expected to increase into the new millennium and it is thus important to provide reliable and relevant input data