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

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