This is a list of organizations involved in research in or advocacy of tribology, the scientific and engineering discipline related to friction, lubrication and wear.
A lubricant is a substance that helps to reduce friction between surfaces in mutual contact, which ultimately reduces the heat generated when the surfaces move. It may also have the function of transmitting forces, transporting foreign particles, or heating or cooling the surfaces. The property of reducing friction is known as lubricity.
The École centrale de Lyon (ECL) is a research university in greater Lyon, France. Founded in 1857 by François Barthélemy Arlès-Dufour in response to the increasing industrialization of France, it is one of the oldest graduate schools in France. The university is part of the Grandes Écoles, a prestigious group of French institutions dedicated to engineering, scientific research, and business education. The current 45-acre campus opened in 1967 and is located in the city of Ecully.
Tribology is the science and engineering of understanding friction, lubrication and wear phenomena for interacting surfaces in relative motion. It is highly interdisciplinary, drawing on many academic fields, including physics, chemistry, materials science, mathematics, biology and engineering. The fundamental objects of study in tribology are tribosystems, which are physical systems of contacting surfaces. Subfields of tribology include biotribology, nanotribology and space tribology. It is also related to other areas such as the coupling of corrosion and tribology in tribocorrosion and the contact mechanics of how surfaces in contact deform. Approximately 20% of the total energy expenditure of the world is due to the impact of friction and wear in the transportation, manufacturing, power generation, and residential sectors.
A foil bearing, also known as a foil-air bearing, is a type of air bearing. A shaft is supported by a compliant, spring-loaded foil journal lining. Once the shaft is spinning fast enough, the working fluid pushes the foil away from the shaft so that no contact occurs. The shaft and foil are separated by the air's high pressure, which is generated by the rotation that pulls gas into the bearing via viscosity effects. The high speed of the shaft with respect to the foil is required to initiate the air gap, and once this has been achieved, no wear occurs. Unlike aerostatic or hydrostatic bearings, foil bearings require no external pressurisation system for the working fluid, so the hydrodynamic bearing is self-starting.
Ali Erdemir, born on July 2, 1954, in Kadirli, Adana, Turkey, is a Turkish American materials scientist specializing in surface engineering and tribology.
Fretting refers to wear and sometimes corrosion damage of loaded surfaces in contact while they encounter small oscillatory movements tangential to the surface. Fretting is caused by adhesion of contact surface asperities, which are subsequently broken again by the small movement. This breaking causes wear debris to be formed.
Bioprocess engineering, also biochemical engineering, is a specialization of chemical engineering or biological engineering. It deals with the design and development of equipment and processes for the manufacturing of products such as agriculture, food, feed, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, chemicals, and polymers and paper from biological materials & treatment of waste water. Bioprocess engineering is a conglomerate of mathematics, biology and industrial design, and consists of various spectrums like the design and study of bioreactors to the creation of kinetic models. It also deals with studying various biotechnological processes used in industries for large scale production of biological product for optimization of yield in the end product and the quality of end product. Bioprocess engineering may include the work of mechanical, electrical, and industrial engineers to apply principles of their disciplines to processes based on using living cells or sub component of such cells.
Albert Kingsbury was an American engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. He was responsible for over fifty patents obtained between the years 1902 to 1930. Kingsbury is most famous for his hydrodynamic thrust bearing which uses a thin film of oil to support weights of up to 220 tons. This bearing extended the service life of many types of machinery during the early 20th century. It was primarily outfitted on Navy ships during World War I and World War II.
The École nationale d'ingénieurs de Saint-Étienne is a French grande école which offers five-year course in engineering after the baccalauréat, in the fields of Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Sensory Engineering.
Digvijai Singh was an Indian mechanical engineer and a former vice chancellor of the University of Roorkee before its reconstitution as the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. He was also a former vice chairman of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and a former director of Central Road Research Institute. He is known for his studies on dynamics of single track vehicles and Fluid film lubrication and was an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences, India as well as the Indian National Academy of Engineering. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Engineering Sciences in 1978.
Kenneth Gösta Holmberg is a Finnish professor emeritus in Mechanical Engineering, especially Tribology,
Jean-François Molinari is a French-Swiss engineer and scientist specialised in the numerical modeling of the mechanics of materials and structures. He is a full professor and the director of the Computational Solid Mechanics Laboratory at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).
Ernest Rabinowicz (1927-2006) was an American mechanical engineer. He was known for his work in tribology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Robert William Carpick is a Canadian mechanical engineer. He is currently director of diversity, equity, and inclusion and John Henry Towne Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania. He is best known for his work in tribology, particularly nanotribology.
Judith A. Harrison is an American physical chemist and tribologist who is known for pioneering numerical methods that incorporate chemical reactions into modeling studies. She is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
David Beauregard Bogy is the William S. Floyd, Jr. Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB). He is also the founder and head of the Computer Mechanics Laboratory (CML) at UCB.. He has made particular contributions in air-bearing analysis and design for the sliders that support the read/write heads in hard disk drives (HDD).
Qian Jane Wang is an American professor of mechanical engineering and the Executive Director for the Center for Surface Engineering and Tribology at Northwestern University. She is a tribologist whose research includes work on contact mechanics, lubrication, micromechanics, and solid-state batteries.
Hong Liang is a Chinese-American nanotribologist whose research focuses on nanoparticles on surfaces, and the nanostructure of surfaces. She is Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. Professor and professor of mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University, president of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers, and editor-in-chief of Tribology International.
Yip-Wah Chung is a materials scientist at Northwestern University. He is a professor of materials science & engineering, and, by courtesy, of mechanical engineering within the McCormick School of Engineering, and serves as co-director of the mechanical engineering–materials science & engineering Master of Science program.