Engine lubricating oil classification by SAE grade and source based on dielectric spectroscopy data

Dielectric spectroscopy (DS) is one of the most powerful and prevailing structural analysis techniques for dielectric materials. Engine lubricating oil is a typical dielectric material. But DS for qualitative or quantitative analysis of engine lubricating oil has received little attention. In this paper, DS in association with support vector machines (SVM) classification technique was employed to classify 20 samples of engine lubricating oils from Mobil, Shell and Esso by Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) viscosity grade and source (manufacturer). Both distinguishing the multi-grade from the single-grade according to SAE grade and classification according to manufacturer were done perfectly, which proved that DS can provide useful compositional and structural information on engine lubricating oil. The work in this article has laid the foundation for further quantitative determination of properties of engine lubricating oil and will be a good start to application of DS to petroleum analysis and testing.