Tribological Approach to the Watch Movements

Valentine Agnès Madeleine Magnin
EPFL, 2020
Thèse EPFL

Résumé

Mechanical watches are complex and sensitive systems that have to maintain a faultless precision over their lifetime. However, this precision can be altered by disturbances occurring during the functioning time, such as friction, lubricant drying, or wear, leading to surface modification. Due to the significant number of contacts, and diversity of materials, geometries, motions, and lubricants, these disturbances and their consequences over time are difficult to control. To deeply understand these phenomena and limit their effect on watches precision over time, a tribological study of watch movements is necessary. The goal of this Ph.D. research is to contribute to the development of a scientific methodology to appraise friction and wear evolution over time in watch movements. To achieve this, a system approach combined with a modelling of the phenomena was used to anticipate the evolution of two critical watch components: the barrel and the escapement.

Based on existing theories of lubrication, the performance of the Swiss lever escapement was appraised as a function of well defined geometrical, kinematic, and dynamic parameters. The developed formalism allowed to highlight the relevance of the radii of curvature of the escapement tooth and the anchor pallet on the effectiveness of the fluid lubrication of the Swiss lever escapement.

The tribology of the barrel, a brass piece coated with a nickel sublayer and a flash of gold, was then investigated. Wear characterization of real pieces allowed to identify the relevant wear mechanisms at the barrel drum/spring contact. Friction tests were performed to reproduce the observed phenomena in controlled conditions. A predictive law was proposed to estimate the loss of power at the escapement wheel and showed that the wear of the barrel drum can significantly affect the energy efficiency of the watch.

Model surfaces composed of a nickel substrate of a specific waviness profile coated with different gold thicknesses were used for further investigation on the wear mechanisms of the gold coating. A simple mechanistic model considering contact pressure, geometrical, and frictional properties was developed to predict the minimum gold thickness necessary to lubricate the system. Two different relations were proposed according to the sliding direction. These relations were used to evaluate possible improvement strategies in terms of materials properties and surface finishing.

With the intention to perform further tribological studies of any contacts of a mechanical watch, a methodology was proposed. This methodology stands on three phases: analysis, modelling and application to the watch.

This thesis emphasizes the need of a tribological study to better understand the tribological response of a mechanical watch. By combining reviews of literature, experimental observations, and theoretical laws, analytical models were developed to identify critical parameters, materials and design strategies for improving the tribological response of watch components.

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/275344?ln=fr

À propos de ce résultat

Cette page est générée automatiquement et peut contenir des informations qui ne sont pas correctes, complètes, à jour ou pertinentes par rapport à votre recherche. Il en va de même pour toutes les autres pages de ce site. Veillez à vérifier les informations auprès des sources officielles de l'EPFL.

Concepts associés

Chargement

Publications associées

Chargement

Valentine Agnès Madeleine Magnin
EPFL, 2020
Thèse EPFL

Résumé

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/275344?ln=fr

À propos de ce résultat

Concepts associés (15)

Concepts associés

Chargement

Publications associées (5)

Publications associées

Chargement

Towards the Glass Transition in Vibrated Granular Matter

Alessandro Luigi Sellerio

Granular materials are large sets of macroscopic particles that interact solely via contact forces. The static behavior depends on the contact network and on the surface friction forces between grains; when they are set in motion (typically by vibrations) their dynamics is dominated by inelastic collisions. For these reasons granular media show an extremely rich phenomenology, ranging from fluid-like properties (if strongly vibrated), to "jamming", glassy, behavior (if weakly vibrated), to aging and hysteretical phenomena observed when they become trapped in frozen, amorphous states. The objective of this work is to study these states and transitions, and to characterize the analogies found between the dynamic behavior of vibrated granular media and the glass transition observed in thermal glass-formers. These analogies justify the interest in granular materials, because granular media can be seen as simplified model systems useful in the study of out of equilibrium thermodynamics, and, in general, to the larger framework known as "complexity". The granular materials considered here are composed of spheric, polished glass spheres. Since the surface state plays an important role in the grain-grain interaction, some measurements were also performed with acid etched beads, having different surface roughness. The samples are vertically vibrated to achieve vibrofluidization. Different kinds of vibration are used, to highlight different properties of the system. We first consider the transition between the fluid and the subcooled glassy phase, using different experimental techniques. The most important one is a torsion oscillator, that interacts with the granular media via immersed probes. The torsion oscillator can be used in forced mode. A torque is applied on the probe, and we measure the mechanical response function (complex susceptibility). In general, a relaxation is found and it is interpreted as the signature of the irreversible energy loss (damping) in granular collisions. This relaxation has an intrinsic time scale, and systematic analysis of it shows that a clear parallel can be traced to the behavior of "strong" glasses. In particular, it is found that (i) the relaxation time is a function of a unified control parameter, proportional to the square root of the average vibration, and phenomenologically equivalent to an effective temperature; (ii) the functional form with which the relaxation times approach the final "frozen" state has an Arrhenius, or Vögel-Fulcher-Tamman (VFT) behavior. The same torsion oscillator is employed in free mode. In this case, no external torque is applied, and the probe moves adapting its position under the effect of the continuous rearrangements in the sample. The system is studied by computing the power spectral density of the (angular position) time series. The resulting spectra represent a "configurational noise" as the system randomly hops from one configuration to the following. This allows to define, using a completely different approach, the same intrinsic time scale observed in forced mode measurements. The comparison of the two techniques allows to obtain a more complete and detailed picture of the dynamics in the jamming region. From this comparison, it was inferred that the system is also influenced by an effective vibration frequency, and that the relaxation time has indeed a non-Arrhenius behavior as a function of a control parameter defined as as = √ Γ/ωs. A model was developed combining rheological observations to a statistic approach describing extremal phenomena. This model justifies the appearance of both the control parameter and the VFT evolution of the relaxation. Furthermore, the model is predictive and exposes the effect of a few other rheologic properties of granular system. The effect of surface roughness are considered, showing that the static and dynamic surface friction coefficients are well described by the model. A second relevant part of this work is devoted to an explicit verification that macroscopic probes act as Brownian objects. This fact is often used to interpret experimental data (also in the present work) and to propose theoretical model. However, no explicit evidence has ever been discussed. This is hard to do, using a constrained system such as the torsion oscillator, because the restoring coefficient influences the dynamics of diffusion. To overcome the problem we built a different apparatus, called "Brownian motor", where the probes are mounted on ball bearings, so that they are free to turn without constraint. The properties of the time series of the position of the free turning probe and of the torsionally constrained oscillator can finally be analyzed and compared with simple simulations. The data show an overall diffusion-like behavior, that is influenced by the presence of constraints. Using fractal analysis we estimate the diffusion, or Hurst exponent. This allows to verify that a "macroscopic" object (the probe) immersed in the "microscopic" granular medium indeed behaves as a Brownian object, and that its dynamics can be studied in detail, showing that it undergoes anomalous diffusion. This work is concluded with a discussion on a few possible developments. The most promising idea is a novel approach to the study of the geometrical properties of the contact network of granular assemblies, that is responsible for many of the properties of the granular sample. By using Magnetic Resonance Imaging, the static 3-D structure of granular media can be reconstructed with unprecedented accuracy, resolution and ease of reproducibility. From the spatial information we can extract all the properties of static granular media: the compaction factor, the grain-grain correlation function, the free volume and other observables. Systematic studies could allow experimental confirmations of the many theoretical models that have been proposed in the last years and that still lack a thorough comparison with experiments. This idea does not conclude the perspectives of this work, that are vast and intriguing. A few promising subjects are reviewed more into detail in the corresponding Perspective section. To name a few we cite: measurements of induced aging in non-vibrated samples, the Brownian motor, stick and slip phenomena and their comparison with earthquakes.

EPFL2012

Chargement

Solid-liquid interfaces are ubiquitous. Despite the unquestioned relevance, many scientific research fields rely on simplified or macroscopic descriptions, discarding the molecular nature of the constituents. However, it is the specific molecular interactions and the complex chemistry in the interfacial region that are fundamental in phenomena such as heterogeneous catalysis, electrochemistry, crystal growth, membrane transport and body-antibody recognition. In particular, the models used to describe the so-called electrical double layer of ionic distributions at charged surfaces in liquid, are based on continuum assumptions. For example, the Gouy-Chapman-Stern model assumes that a dense, homogenously distributed layer with a thickness of a hydrated ion (referred to as the "Stern layer"), is adsorbed onto the charged surface, proceeded by an exponentially decaying diffuse ionic cloud, in which ions are point charges in a continuous dielectric media. In this thesis, I will first illustrate how the assumption of a homogeneous ion lateral density in the Stern Layer fails to describe the actual solid-water interface of several relevant surfaces. Then I will show how the lateral organization of the ions indeed plays a role as important as the vertical modulation of the charge distribution. This is because the molecular nature of the ions, the surface, and the water molecules themselves each contribute to the precise lateral organization of the constituents. As result, the ions can reside on discrete surface sites, defined both laterally and vertically in space. Moreover, the water-mediated interaction can impart a correlation in the reciprocal lateral distribution of the ions. To achieve this level of description, high-resolution atomic force microscopy (AFM) is used. Unlike most of other experimental techniques, AFM is able to characterize interfaces locally at the atomic/molecular level. In fact, in the AFM small-amplitude regime, detection of even single ions adsorbed at the surface of the solid is possible by measuring the perturbation they induce on the local solvation environment. This capability represents an invaluable tool for the exploration of phenomena occurring at the Stern layer of solid-liquid interfaces. Following, I will investigate the properties of several solid-aqueous interfaces in the presence of different ionic concentrations and species, ranging from hard (mica) to soft systems such as organic self-assembled monolayers, lipid bilayers, and the dynamic surface restructuring of calcite when covered with fatty acid molecules. The experimental study, combined with molecular dynamic simulations, reveals a water-induced ion-ion attractive interaction for some ionic species. These results show that water alone is the driving force to induce order within the Stern layer, creating hydration-correlation effects on mica, self-assembled monolayers and possibly lipid bilayers. The local modulation of the hydration properties of the surface is fundamental to highly dynamic systems such as calcite, where steps act as nucleating points for the processes of dissolution and growth. The specific interaction of foreign ions and fatty acids modify these processes as well as the equilibrium between the crystal and the solution. This thesis provides clear experimental evidence of new mechanisms developing at solid-liquid interfaces paving the way for a deeper and more conscious understanding of the colloidal properties of materials.

EPFL2015

Chargement

Why are classical theories often sufficient to describe the physics of our world even though everything around us is entirely composed of microscopic quantum systems? The boundary between these two fundamentally dissimilar theories remains an unsolved problem in modern physics. Position measurements of small objects allow us to probe the area where the classical approximation breaks down. In quantum mechanics, Heisenbergâs uncertainty principle dictates that any measurement of the position must be accompanied by measurement induced back-action---in this case manifested as an uncertainty in the momentum. In recent years, cavity optomechanics has become a powerful tool to perform precise position measurements and investigate their fundamental limitations. The utilization of optical micro-cavities greatly enhances the interaction between light and state-of-the-art nanomechanical oscillators. Therefore, quantum mechanical phenomena have been successfully observed in systems far beyond the microscopic world. In such a cavity optomechanical system, the fluctuations in the position of the oscillator are transduced onto the phase of the light, while fluctuations in the amplitude of the light disturb the momentum of the oscillator during the measurement. As a consequence, correlations are established between the amplitude and phase quadrature of the probe light. However, so far, observation of quantum effects has been limited exclusively to cryogenic experiments, and access to the quantum regime at room temperature has remained an elusive goal because the overwhelming amount of thermal motion masks the weak quantum effects. This thesis describes the engineering of a high-performance cavity optomechanical device and presents experimental results showing, for the first time, the broadband effects of quantum back-action at room temperature. The device strongly couples mechanical and optical modes of exceptionally high quality factors to provide a measurement sensitivity

\sim\!10^4

times below the requirement to resolve the zero-point fluctuations of the mechanical oscillator. The quantum back-action is then observed through the correlations created between the probe light and the motion of the nanomechanical oscillator. A so-called âvariational measurementâ, which detects the transmitted light in a homodyne detector tuned close to the amplitude quadrature, resolves the quantum noise due to these correlations at the level of 10% of the thermal noise over more than an octave of Fourier frequencies around mechanical resonance. Moreover, building on this result, an additional experiment demonstrates the ability to achieve quantum enhanced metrology. In this case, the generated quantum correlations are used to cancel quantum noise in the measurement record, which then leads to an improved relative signal-to-noise ratio in measurements of an external force. In conclusion, the successful observation of broadband quantum behavior on a macroscopic object at room temperature is an important milestone in the field of cavity optomechanics. Specifically, this result heralds the rise of optomechanical systems as a platform for quantum physics at room temperature and shows promise for generation of ponderomotive squeezing in room-temperature interferometers.

EPFL2017

Chargement

Towards the Glass Transition in Vibrated Granular Matter

Alessandro Luigi Sellerio

EPFL2012

\sim\!10^4

EPFL2017

EPFL2015