W.S.G. Isaac Newton

H.R. Oost

Bearings are one of the most common machine elements around the world. It is such a common part, whilst the bearings themselves become more and more specialized. SKF is one of the leading companies in the bearing industry. The location of SKF in Houten provides the company with massive amounts of research in the areas of coatings, materials, and lubricants. The different departments work closely together to improve bearings continuously. The area I worked in was the grease research department. The internship consisted of continuing experiments on grease rheology. Grease is commonly used around the world, but still, its properties and behavior are hard to predict. This is what the research team at SKF focuses on and where I played a role. The experiments made use of state-of-the-art machinery which was used to further analyze the behavior of grease at the start of running, which is called grease churning. By further analyzing this process the team can hopefully enhance their understanding of grease behavior in bearings.