Green Tribology

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Tribology is the essential underpinning science of lubrication, friction and wear and therefore is paramount to the efficient operation of numerous mechanical systems such as engines, gearboxes, human joint implants, manufacturing, sustainable energy and ship performance just to name a few. The specific field of green or environment-friendly tribology emphasizes the green or clean technology aspects of wear, friction and lubrication of interacting surfaces in relative motion in numerous mechanical systems. The interaction of these surfaces is of importance for energy or environmental sustainability and has impact upon today's environment. This includes tribological technology that mimics living nature and thus is expected to be environment-friendly, the control of friction and wear that is of importance for energy conservation and conversion (thus emissions and carbon footprint), enhanced manufacturing techniques such as chemical mechanical polishing, environmental aspects of lubrication and surface modification techniques as well as tribological aspects of green applications such as the wind-power and tidal turbines. The area of green tribology will therefore directly affect the economy by reducing waste and extending equipment life, improve the quality of life and will help reduce the carbon footprint of many mechanical systems. It will also help address the need for increased resource responsibility and lower the health risks by creation of legislation compliant surfaces and coatings to replace potential hazardous coatings currently being used. The proposal is from a group that is very able to manage the highly innovative and challenging research into the new area of Green Tribology. The group will be able to join various disciplines together that are essential to establishing a multidisciplinary team, namely chemistry, tribology, mechanical engineering, surface science, material science and manufacturing. The grant would focus on developing the right environment for innovative research and new directions to be studied and therefore designs for managing a flexible research portfolio are presented. The research would cover modelling and experimental approaches. The team will build world-leading and disruptive research solutions and demonstrators in green tribo-materials and natural product chemistry, tribo-metrology, tribo-electrochemistry, tribo-smart coatings, tribo-sensing to develop green tribology solutions.