Short Programs

Tribology: Friction, Wear, and Lubrication [2.81s]

Date: June 25-29, 2012 | Tuition: $3,000 | Continuing Education Units (CEUs): 2.8
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Background  |  Learning Objectives  |  Who Should Participate  |  Course Notes  | 
Outline of the Program  |  Schedule  |  Participants' Comments  |  About the Presenters  |  Location  |  Updates

Background

The study of friction, wear, and lubrication has long been of enormous practical importance, since the functioning of many mechanical, electromechanical and biological systems depends on the appropriate friction and wear values. In recent decades, this field, termed tribology, has received increasing attention as it has become evident that the wastage of resources resulting from high friction and wear is greater than 6% of the Gross National Product. The potential savings offered by improved tribological knowledge, too, are great.

The background of most engineers in this important technological area, however, is seriously deficient. For example, an undergraduate engineering student receives less than an hour of instruction in tribology. Moreover, most reference works of tribology provide little guidance to solving real-world problems.

Accordingly, this program presents current insights into tribology in a pedagogical form, focusing on the concepts of surface energy, elastic and elastoplastic deformation, and delamination at the microscale. Additionally, special consideration is given to tribological phenomena at the nanoscale, and the application of fundamental knowledge to control friction and wear behavior in practical situations. Furthermore, modern experimental methods and quantitative relationships are discussed.

Learning Objectives

• Describe surface topography, physico-chemical aspects of solid surfaces, and surface interactions.
• Analyze the mechanics of solid elastic and elastoplastic contacts.
• Recognize the laws of friction, mechanisms of friction, friction space, stiction, stick slip, and surface temperature.
• Appreciate the various modes of wear: adhesive, delamination, fretting, abrasive, erosive, corrosive, oxidational (mild and severe), melt, and the wear-mechanism maps.
• Identify types of lubrication: boundary, solid-film, hydrodynamic, and hydrostatic lubrication.
• Examine applications: sliding contacts, rolling contacts, electric contacts, and micromechanical systems.
• Introduce the design of tribological surfaces, and how to troubleshoot tribology problems.

Who Should Participate

The program is intended for two kinds of participants: those who are active or intend to be active in research on some aspect of tribology, and those who have encountered practical friction and wear problems and wish to learn novel methods of solving them.

The course requires at least a first-year college course in mathematics, applied mechanics and materials. Some lectures introduce more advanced concepts in these areas, and in physical chemistry and thermodynamics. These will be reviewed where necessary to provide the required background.

Course Notes

Each participant receives the book Tribophysics by Nam P. Suh (Prentice Hall, New York, 1986), and extensive notes.

Outline of the Program

View 2010 Course Schedule

Overview and preliminaries

Course Overview, Surface Topography, Physico-Chemical Aspects of Solid Surfaces, Surface Interactions.

Mechanics of solid contacts

Elastic Contacts, Elastoplastic Contacts, Fracture.

Friction

Laws of Friction, Mechanisms of Friction, Friction Space, Stiction, Stick Slip, Surface Temperature.

Wear

Adhesive Wear, Delamination Wear, Fretting Wear, Abrasive Wear, Erosive Wear, Corrosive Wear, Mild and Severe Oxidational Wear, Melt Wear, Wear-Mechanism Maps.

Lubrication

Boundary Lubrication, Solid-Film Lubrication, Mixed Lubrication, Hydrodynamic Lubrication, Hydrostatic Lubrication.

Nanoscale tribology

Interatomic Interactions, Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), Challenges of Tribological Testing at Small Scales.

Tribological testing

Common Geometries, Instrumentation and Methods Used for Testing, Influences of Test Parameters.

Applications

Sliding Contacts, Rolling Contacts, Electric Contacts, Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS). Design of Tribological Surfaces, Troubleshooting.

Course schedule, registration times, Special Events

Class runs 8:30 am - 5:00 pm every day except Friday when it ends at 12:00 noon.

Registration is on Monday morning from 7:45 - 8:15 am.

Special events include a dinner for course participants and faculty on Wednesday night. Evening activities are included in tuition.

Participants' Comments

Staff Engineer, Goodrich Aerostructures
"This type of information and presentation is simply not available in the working world."

Assistant Professor, University of Toledo
"The experience was extremely positive, mostly because Drs. Saka and Suh are very good instructors. They know how to extract the essence, how to structure, and how to make sense of the multitude of information from a complex field."

Engineer, SatCon Technology Corporation
"Useful in understanding widely varying results obtained in practical wear applications and ways to avoid them."

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS

Dr. Nannaji Saka, MIT
Nannaji Saka is a Research Affiliate (formerly a Principal Research Scientist) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity at MIT. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering (First class Honors), a Master's degree in Metallurgical Engineering, and a Doctoral degree in Materials Science and Engineering. Over the past three decades he has collaborated with Professors Ernest Rabinowicz and Nam P. Suh in research on a variety of tribological problems and phenomena.

Dr. Saka has co-authored over a hundred technical papers in tribology, mechanical behavior of materials, and manufacturing processes. He has co-edited, with Professor Suh, the proceedings of an international conference on the Fundamentals of Tribology held at MIT. He holds seven US patents on electrical contacts and chemical-mechanical polishing, and has several patents pending. Over the years he has supervised thirty bachelor's, master's and doctoral theses, and has been a committee member of a dozen doctoral theses. He has been the principal or co-principal investigator of numerous projects sponsored by several government agencies (DARPA, NSF, ONR) and by many industrial firms (Control Data, DEC, Draper Laboratory, Hoya Electronics, Intel, New England Instruments, NGK, Omron, Pratt & Whitney, Semiconductor Research Corporation, SVG, Teradyne, and others).

He has been a member of ASME, ASM-International, STLE, AAAS, and Sigma Xi, and has been an associate editor of the journal STLE Tribology Transactions and of the ASME press Series monographs Advances in Information Storage Systems. He has been a frequent reviewer of technical papers for STLE Tribology Transactions, Journal of Tribology/ ASME, Wear, and the Journal of Engineering for Industry/ASME.

Dr. Said Jahanmir, MiTiHeart Corporation
Said Jahanmir is President and CEO of the MiTiHeart Corporation, a subsidiary of Mohawk Innovative Technology, Inc. (MiTi), where he serves as Vice President for Biotechnology and leads efforts on implantable blood pumps. Prior to joining MiTi he was associated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (1987-2002) where he served in several capacities including Leader of the Ceramic Manufacturing Group. He directed research activities that ranged from characterization of ceramic powders to assessment of mechanical properties of advanced materials. He also coordinated several international collaborations on standards activities. He served as chair of the Ceramic Machining Consortium that he established as a joint research program between NIST, industry, and academic organizations (1992-2001). Previous affiliations include the National Science Foundation (1985-1987), Director of Tribology Program; Exxon Research and Engineering Company (1980-1985), senior research engineer; Cornell University (1977-1980), Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering; University of California at Berkeley (1976-1977), Lecturer; and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1975-1976), Instructor.

His research in tribology and machining of advanced materials is widely recognized in the scientific and engineering communities. He has published over two hundred forty papers and reports related to machining of ceramics, mechanisms and mechanics of interfaces, wear and friction, boundary lubrication, and biotribology; and has given more than three hundred lectures on these subjects. He has edited several books and conference proceedings on machining and tribology of advanced materials.

He has been active in technical and administrative committees and boards in several engineering societies and has served in several advisory groups in the federal government and universities. He was elected to chair the Gordon Research Conference on Tribology (1998). He is serving as founding Executive Editor for the Machining Science and Technology Journal. He is also active in local educational policy issues and served as President of Partnership for Educational Policy (2002-2003), a new organization formed to inform the public and policy makers on educational issues that have a wide reaching impact on K-12 education. He is an Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University Delaware and Honorary Research Professor at Hanyang University in South Korea.

He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and has served in various capacities including Chair of the Research Committee on Tribology (1988-1990), Associate Editor of the Journal of Tribology (1990-1993), and Chair of the Tribology Division’s Executive Committee (1997-1999). He served as ASME’s Vice President for Research and Chair of the Board on Research and Technology Development (2001-2004). He also served as Technical Program Chair for the 2004 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, and General Chair for 2005. He is presently serving as Chair of the ASME Congress.

He was elected Fellow (1992) and Honorary Member (1997) of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE) and served in various positions that included founding Chair of the Ceramics Committee (1988-1989) and Chair of the Fellows Nomination Committee (1997-1998). He is a member of the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs (ASAIO) and serves on the Industrial Liaison Committee, and is a member of the International Society for Rotary Blood Pumps (ISRBP).

His awards include the ASME Mayo D. Hersey Award (2001), the Federal Laboratory Consortium Technology Transfer Award (2000), the STLE International Award (1997), and the ASME Dedicated Service Award (1995). He was honored as the Community Hero by the Montgomery County Civic Federation (1999) for his contribution to local educational issues. He is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Science and Engineering and American Men and Women of Science.

He received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, magna cum laude, at the University of Washington (1971); and his master’s and doctoral degrees in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1973 and 1976, respectively). He holds three U.S. and Canadian Patents.

Dr. Nicholas X. Randall
Nicholas X. Randall is a Chartered Engineer (CEng MIM) and holds a B.Sc. in Materials Science from Brunel University (London, UK) 1994 and a Ph.D. from Neuchatel University (Neuchatel, Switzerland) 1997. His Ph.D. Thesis entitled, “Development & Application of a Multi-functional Nanotribological Tool” consisted of developing the first combined system for nanoindentation and Scanning Force Microscopy (SFM). This system has now been commercially available since 1997.

From 1997 to 2002 he served as the Customer Services Manager with CSM Instruments in Switzerland. He was responsible for after-sales service, technical documentation, installations, training, and contract testing laboratory service. Currently he is the Vice-President of Business Development at CSM Instruments and was responsible for setting-up the U.S. subsidiary of CSM Instruments in Boston, MA. This office provides sales, support, and contract testing for North America, Canada, and Mexico.

Dr. Randall has published extensively in the field of surface mechanical properties testing, especially related to scratch (adhesion) testing, nanoindentation, and tribology testing. He is chairman of ASTM committee G02.40, responsible for developing tribological test standards for non-abrasive wear. He is currently writing a chapter on tribological testing of biomaterials for the forthcoming "ASM Handbook of Materials for Medical Devices", and is a member of MRS, ASM, ASTM, STLE, and The Institute of Materials (UK). He is a frequent reviewer of technical papers for Surface & Coatings Technology, Thin Solid Films, and Journal of Materials Research. He also runs a biannual course on Reliability and Test of MEMS and Microsystems as part of FSRM (Swiss Federation for Research in Microtechnology).

Location

This course takes place on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We can also offer this course for groups of employees at your location. Please contact the Short Programs office for further details.

Updates

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