Most of the rolling element bearings are lubricated with Grease lubricant. Generally, the grease is expected to serve for life. The major causes of the bearing failure are due to the failure of the lubrication. The grease will experience creeping, oil permeation, oil separation etc. The separated oil will be lost permanently from the bearing. The widely used grease for general application is the lithium grease. The thickener of the grease consists covalent bond. When the grease is sheared, the breakage of the covalent bond will be permanent, resulting in the permanent loss of the rheological properties. The gels have unique properties such as thermal reversibility, viscoelasticity and thixotropy. They become mobile under shear stress and solidify again when the shear stress is removed. This property can be harnessed to avoid the base oil creeping, oil permeation, leakage in gears and bearings. Due to the presence of the polar group in the gels, they form a good tribo film and prevent the wear.  Under the shear stress, weak supramolecular interactions will be distorted, and this leads to the release of the oil and they re-form the structure after a certain period of rest. When the gel is in the solid-state, it will avoid creeping and evaporation. Many classes of gels are either derived from natural sources or from environmentally friendly materials. Thus, the lubricant formed out of gel would effectively solve both environmental as well as lubrication problems. In this work, supramolecular gel lubricants were prepared out of fully green, cellulose derivatives and starch hydrolysates. The non-ionic hydroxyethyl cellulose (HEC) and anionic sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (NaCMC) were chosen to understand the effect of ionic and non-ionic gelators on the rheological and the tribological parameters. Traditionally fat was used as a lubricant, now, in food industry various fat replacers are being used. To study whether the fat replacers can act as a thickener, Dextrin and maltodextrins were chosen.  Dextrin and maltodextrin with the different DE values were selected to understand the influence of molecular weight on gelation and tribological performance.  Inspired by the recent developments and advantages of aqueous lubrication, mixer of water and poly(ethylene glycol) 200 (PEG 200) is chosen as the base fluid. It was found that a very small amount of gelator can increase the viscosity of the PEG/water to several orders. The thermal stability of the gels was studied using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and found that gels can increase the thermal stability of the base fluid. FTIR results showed the formation of a non-covalent bond between the PEG molecules and water. It is shown that anionic gelator will result in producing low friction and wear in comparison to non-ionic gelator. The possible tribo-film formation due to the negative charge in the NaCMC molecules is attributed to these results. The very low friction and low wear was exhibited by the dextrin and maltodextrin gels. It is proposed that this could be due to the microspherical particles of gels which can act as nano bearings. It was found that choosing the optimum concentration of the gelator is important to reduce friction and wear. The higher gelator concentration will form the hard gel, which cannot flow and replenish the sliding contact, resulting in the starved lubrication. This will cause high wear and friction. These gel lubricants can be used in food, pharmaceutical and biomedical industries.

Achieving sustainable lubrication by using environmentally friendly formulated lubricants has became an essential component of the transition process from fossil-powered vehicles to electrified transportation. Mixtures, or aqueous solutions of molecules such as polyhydroxy alcohols, and glycols usually known as green lubricants make it possible to achieve low friction coefficients under different lubrication conditions, which constitutes a potential alternative to improve the tribological performance of moving parts in automotive systems, at the same time that the environmental requirements are satisfied. There is a need to improve the protection against mild-wear and micropitting offered by green-lubricants before consider using them in the transmission gear box of battery electric vehicles BEVs, where their low shear-stress resistance can potentially help to improve the vehicle efficiency. Therefore, this research work aims to gain understanding of the tribological behaviour of rolling-sliding elements under glycerol-based lubrication, with focus on assessing the influence of different glycerol-based lubricant formulations on the wear modes associated to rolling contact fatigue such as micropitting, and macropitting.  Micropitting tests were carried out by using a micropitting rig, with a roller on ring planetary configuration. The evolution of microcracks, and micropitting was studied for several glycerol-based lubricants at different slide-to-roll ratios (SRRs) 5-30%, and different load contact conditions 1.5-2.5 GPa. A comparison against a fully formulated transmission oil has been performed. A relationship between the surface damage morphology and the operating conditions has been established. The lubrication regimes of DLC coated contacts and uncoated contacts in presence of glycerol-based lubricants were investigated through the construction of 3D friction maps, and Stribeck curves in a wide range of rolling speeds, and SRR testing conditions. The capability of two different DLC coating systems to prevent micropitting onset due to rolling contact fatigue in presence of glycerol-based lubricants was studied: Cr/a-WC:H/a-C:H and a-C:Cr.  Under mixed-lubrication regime it was found that a reduction up to 51% of friction can be achieved by using glycerol-based lubricants compared to a commercial transmission oil. The initial low friction coefficients at low contact cycles was attributed to the low pressure-viscosity coefficient of the glycerol-based lubricants. Friction was even further reduced with the increasing contact cycles since glycerol aqueous solutions were found to promote mild-wear, causing a smoothing of the surface asperities and therefore an enhancement of the hydrodynamic effect due a higher lambda ratio (Λ), making possible to trigger superlubricity in the contact. Surface micro-cracking was found to decrease at low SRR values under glycerol-based lubrication contrasted to the contacts lubricated with a fully formulated transmission oil. Once microcracks were nucleated, micropitting progressed faster in the contacts lubricated with glycerol-based lubricants, while micropitting was null or significantly delayed in presence of transmission oil. With the increasing SRR surface microcracks density and micropitting was found to became higher. The reduction of microcracks density with a glycerol-glycol based lubricant was attributed to the adsorption of long glycol molecules on the steel surface that avoid the direct interaction between asperities. The faster micropitting progression was attributed to the presence of dissolved water in the contact. Thin DLC a-C:Cr coatings were shown to significantly mitigate the penetration of surface initiated pits into the steel substrate, which was translated in a lower volume loss. Local micro-delamination was found to be the main reason behind coating failure in presence of glycerol-based lubricants, as a result, pitting took place on the steel exposed areas.