Simulation Tools for the design of safe and sustainable Lubricants

SiToLub project aims to develop a digital tool/platform for the Safe and Sustainable by Design formulation of new lubricants.

The tools developed will provide assessment of the safety (toxicity to humans, ecotoxicity to environment and workers risk) and, at the same time, sustainability guidance to design ecofluids (coolants, greases, oils) in a clear and holistic way regarding the foreseeable physico-chemical properties and tribological performance.

The safety assessment will be realized by using molecular dynamic models developed by the partners.The tribological models will allow the prediction of the energy consumption during use by providing friction force values, and expected durability of the materials by using wear data about the materials in contact with different fluids. they will also provide information about tthe degradation of the fluids in use and the chemical reactions occurring.

The models will be flexible enough to predict the behaviour of the materials for different working parameters applied for different applications (wind turbines, electric cars and waterborne) This ambitious and forward-thinking system will leverage on a series of tools, ranging from technical evaluation and prediction models (computational models supported by artificial intelligence), combined with established Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodologies to consider the environmental, social and economic impact.The project will move in close collaboration with already funded European projects as i-Tribomat (H2020 G.A. 814494) for the creation of a OiTB for tribological materials, OntoCommons (H2020 G.A. 958371) for the standardisation of data documentation across all domains related to materials and manufacturing and IRISS (HORIZON EUROPE G.A. 101058245), the international ecosystem for accelerating the transition to Safe-and-Sustainable-by-design materials, products and processes.