Special Issue on Tribo-Informatics: Toward High-Efficiency Tribology Research

Abstract

Tribology is the study of interacting surfaces in relative motion, and it includes the study and application of the principles of friction, lubrication, and wear. A tribology system is a complex time-dependent system consisting of tribo-pairs, lubricants, and external environmental conditions. In order to study the tribo-system, a tremendous amount of information is generated, including contact conditions (e.g., load, speed, and time), direct signals (e.g., coefficient of friction and wear-rate), and indirect signals (e.g., images, noise, and temperature). Tribologists analyze the information to understand, predict, and optimize the system. Although breakthrough in tribology has been achieved in the past decades, it is more difficult to gain a comprehensive understanding and an accurate prediction of a tribology system (e.g., coefficient of friction, wear-rate, vibration, and temperature) based on pure physical models. The main reason is that the tribology system is more complex since cross-scale problems and multi-disciplinary knowledge are involved.