Overview
Tribology is the study of friction and wear, and affects a wide range of aspects of our life. Friction results in energy losses whilst wear causes material degradation, component failure and inefficient operation of machinery. Both friction and wear therefore directly impact the consumption of scarce resources, and many academic tribology investigations focus on minimising these two parameters, which are somehow related but not in a linear way. A typical solution is to achieve improvements through optimised lubrication.
Tribology also covers many aspects in and on the human body, and we typically only become aware of this when things stop functioning as they should. Examples are widespread, from arthritic joints to gritty eyes and from skin blisters to bruxism. A key research question in these cases is something along the lines of “What is the relationship between the tribological performance and a person’s experience in terms of perception, (dis-)comfort, injury and pain.”
Investigating these biotribological aspects requires a different approach to that commonly used in tribological testing. Many of the inherent assumptions and simplifications we make when experimentally investigating rigid engineering materials do not hold for soft(er) tissue. Deformations are typically large, contact pressures very low, the contacting geometries are variable and poorly-defined and the materials behave in a rather complex manner. Attempts to accommodate these complexities in experiments have resulted in a wide range of creative set-ups and investigations, which are sometimes elegant in their simplicity, but unfortunately often incredibly complex.
In this talk, Marc Masen, Reader in Tribology and Mechanical Engineering Design at Imperial College London, will discuss recent work and insights, focusing on research towards preventing skin injury, as well as better understanding hydrogel and cartilage lubrication, and how our recent insights may in turn be applied to solve engineering challenges.
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