The Cutting Edge of Tribology

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• Preface
• Contents

Sometimes we have taken the opportunity to express opinions on topics we consider significant for our field. These have ranged from reports on workshops or conferences that we viewed as important, developments in tribology that could have an impact on the way people do or report research, or our current views on the state of the field…

This Chapter on Fundamentals of Friction and Damage is by far the largest, with fifteen articles. This partly reflects the emphasis of the Cutting Edge column, but also our own biases. The articles can be broadly classified into fundamental experimental methods and theoretical strategies for understanding friction and wear…

Despite competition from solid-state information-storage technologies in the form of memory sticks, hard disk drives have managed to keep pace, in terms of cost and storage density, for many decades. This has required a phenomenal industrial R&D effort, and many of the challenges faced have been tribological in nature. We have reported on a number of studies that have been relevant to this extraordinary technological story…

One of the holy grails of tribological research is to obtain extremely low friction coefficients, in order to reduce energy consumption, increase fuel efficiency, and generally make it easier to move things around. There is evidence that the ancient Egyptians used lubricants to help them move the massive stones that they needed to build the pyramids. Low friction coefficients can be obtained using hydrodynamic lubrication, but there are many situations in which thick lubricants films cannot be used. The quest for low-friction solid lubricants has often exploited the unique chemical properties of carbon, and this is reflected in the number of Cutting Edge articles on new materials involving carbon. This is due to carbon's ability to form a wide variety of chemical structures and a whole field — organic chemistry — is built around its chemical versatility. The discovery of carbon-based materials has also resulted in two recent Nobel prizes, for spherical C₆₀ Buckminsterfullerene particles in 1985 and single-layer graphite, graphene, in 2010…

Tribology is no exception to the observation that many breakthroughs in science involve inventions in instrumentation and methods. We have written about a number of innovations in our column, that we believe have the potential to move our field forward…

Looking back over the last decade, it is remarkable how many columns we wrote on biological aspects of tribology. While on the one hand it is clear that lubrication of artificial joints is an important medical issue in an aging population, this was by far not the only topic that caught our imaginations. In fact, the first biotribological piece we wrote was on teeth (Tribological Testing of Teeth, June, 2006), reporting on the potential of tungsten disulphide nanoparticles, incorporated into nickel-phosphorus electroless films, to lower the friction between braces and wires, thereby facilitating orthodontic procedures…

Understanding the area of contact between two solids is fundamental to tribology and many books have been written on the subject. At least for smooth elastic surfaces, the ideas of Hertz, that he formulated over a single Christmas holiday in the 19^th Century, have been used ever since as the basis for calculation contact areas. However, the real engineering situation is much more complex, described by Archard as being due to the contact between rough surfaces having “protuberances on protuberances on protuberances”…

While both of us work extensively in the area of tribology, we were both originally trained as chemists, so that the interplay between tribology and chemistry is particularly close to our hearts. While the chemistry occurring at a sliding interface is central to understanding tribological phenomena in the boundary-lubrication regime, as surface asperities come into contact during sliding, this is perhaps the most challenging area of tribology due to the difficulty of seeing what is happening in this sliding interface…

A large proportion of tribologists work in the more traditional areas of oil lubrication of machine elements or wear of steel components. Nowadays, many others are to be found among the ranks of those engaged in research in articular implants or hard-disk systems, as well as fundamental aspects of tribology. In addition to these important, and now mainstream areas, however, we have endeavored, over the last decade, to bring less obvious tribological topics to our readers' attention…

The following section is included:

• Index