Structural Transformation in Tribology

Dear Colleagues,

The tribology community is progressively discovering more and more about the surfaces that rub together. Nevertheless, the challenge is now to provide a coupled physical, chemical, and mechanical understanding of surface changes that occur under a variety of tribological conditions in a wide range of mechanical systems and fields of applications. This Special Issue will focus on understanding the mechanisms involved in the structural transformation induced by friction. During friction, materials evolve in their skin, just below the sliding surface, and undergo major modifications. Those can be described as:

• The transformations of the near surface layers (severe plastic deformation, nanostructuration, phase transformations, etc.). Such layers often exhibit distinct properties compared to the unworn first bodies, and become the source of detached particles;
• The detachment of particles and their fate in the contact, i.e., basically the formation of a third body layer in the contact or their ejection out of the contact.

All contributions are welcome, concerning topics of interest including but not limited to the following:

Innovating approaches to study and control the initiation and the growth of the tribologically transformed structures (TTS); new means of investigation and accurate analysis methodologies to characterize the physical–structural/mechanical properties of the transformed layers (TTS and third body layers); new trends and progress understanding in the relationships between the TTS and the third body tribological characteristics (“efficient” or not, protective or not) and involved mechanisms; modeling advances (tools, multi-scale approach, etc.).

It is my pleasure to invite you to submit original research papers, short communications or review articles that describe the current state-of-the-art within the scope of this Special Issue.

 Dr., HDR, Sylvie Descartes
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Lubricants is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Dry sliding friction and wear
• In situ/in operando tribometry
• Highly-deformed materials characterization techniques
• Multiphysics approach
• Modeling