Friction, Lubrication and Wear (Tribology)

Friction and associated wear between sliding and/or rotating components is a major factor in high energy cost and fluid contamination. Significant reductions in these effects can be achieved by optimising the lubrication film between the components.  Our knowledge of fluid dynamic and engineering are used to improve  and optimise the tribological behaviour of lubricated systems which together with our experience of fluid-material compatibility are employed to improving the operating lifetime and effectiveness of many engineering processes.

Research and Testing

• Evaluation of tribomaterial pairs for sliding and rotating duties.
• Particle contamination and abrasive wear testing and modelling.
• Failure analysis, classification and prevention of friction and wear related problems.
• Modelling of interfacial friction and wear phenomena.
• Bespoke tribotesting based on customer requirements for bearings, valves, piston ring packs, actuator systems, shock absorbers and turbomachinery components.
• Research on the use of nanoparticle based anti-wear additives in lubricants in real applications.
• Research on the use of hard and soft coatings for low friction and wear applications.
• Research on high speed sliding friction and localised material yielding.

Design, Modelling and Product Development

• Design and development of sliding and rotating components for operation within a wide range of fluid media.
• Design reviews of critical engineering components subjected to and friction and wear behaviour in applications with high contact loads .
• Provison of thermomechanical stress, fluid mechanics  and contact mechanics  analysis from macro to nanoscale phenomena.
• Use of in house code and commercially available analysis tools for product development such as FEA (finite element analysis), CFD (computational fluid dynamics) and MD (molecular dynamics) to tackle tribological problems.