Purpose Ageing has been known to affect the performance of lubricants. However, there is a lot of debate as to whether ageing is beneficial or detrimental to the wear performance of lubricants. Design/methodology/approach The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effect of ageing on the viscosity, total acid number and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy information of a series of lubricants. The tribological performance (friction and wear) of the aged lubricants is also studied, followed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis on the selected post-test samples to study the tribochemical features of the tribofilm. Findings The results show that ageing has a different impact on lubricants and tribological performances based on the physical and chemical properties. Originality/value These findings will be compared with the research on the role of water in lubricant ageing (Part II of this study).
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Cen et al. (2018) studied this question.
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