Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Tribology to Create Reliable, Efficient, Sustainable Transportation

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The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.Vehicles consume approximately 19% of the world's energy and produce approximately 23% of total greenhouse gas emissions each year. Over 30% of this energy consumption originates from simply overcoming losses due to friction and wear. Further, many new energy-efficient technologies are obstructed by issues related to friction and wear. For example, low viscosity lubricants can greatly reduce energy losses in engines and drivetrains, but there is still no solution to prevent the harsher wear that results when lower viscosity lubricants are used. Such new technologies are impeded by the lack of fundamental knowledge in tribology - the study of friction, lubrication, and wear. Related to this, there is a lack of advanced materials, components, and design approaches in industry that are aimed at reducing friction and wear. Moreover, the tribology workforce in the U.S. is ageing and dwindling due to a lack of education and training efforts. This planning grant will bring together a diverse set of innovators to identify the most promising technologies, the best-equipped team, and the most receptive industry and institute partners to form Tribo-CREST: the ERC for Tribology to Create Reliable, Efficient, Sustainable Transportation. Tribo-CREST will aim to transform the efficiency, reliability, and sustainability of vehicle technologies with a primary focus on engines and drivetrains. The ERC this planning grant will be working towards will aim to produce new knowledge, methods, and facilities; transformative commercial impact; and a reinvigorated, diverse, tribology workforce.Tribology is a highly convergent research domain. Phenomena related to physics, chemistry, solid mechanics, surface science, fluid mechanics, thermal science, and materials science all exist and interact at the contact between two sliding surfaces. Tribologists must understand and predict these complex phenomena, which occur at a dynamic interface hidden from view. Thus, tribology solutions require the deep integration of knowledge at the intersections of multiple domains, new and innovative experimental and simulation tools, and diverse teams who can assemble the multi-faceted perspectives needed. While this poses tremendous challenges, it also illustrates the scale of the opportunity for a tribology-focused ERC. To accomplish this, the proposing team will identify methods, facilities, people, and industries whose partnership will result in an ERC proposal for cutting-edge research and education on vehicle engine and drivetrain technology. This involves studying advanced materials with engineered surfaces where performance hinges not only on strength, but on weakness: recent work has shown that the best engineered tribological systems achieve easy sliding while maintaining low wear through dynamic formation and regeneration of soft interfacial films. The planning grant team will integrate the input of 30-40 experts from academia, industry, research institutes, national laboratories, industry consortia, and professional societies, who will help formulate the basis for a visionary ERC. The team will assess how the ERC can exceed national averages for participation of women, minorities, Veterans, and first-generation low income students (FGLIs) by leveraging the diverse populations and successful diversity programs of the lead institutions: U.C.-Merced (53% Hispanic students); Texas A&M U. (10th nationwide in Hispanic PhDs and a top-ranked school for Veterans); U. Florida (in the top 10 for Hispanic and African American bachelor's and doctoral degrees); and U. Pennsylvania (a private university with need-blind admission whose engineering school has increased its FGLI population substantially in recent years).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.