2022 Gordon Research Conference on Tribology: Understanding Sliding Interfaces to Master Tribological Systems Across Length Scales; Lewiston, Maine; 25 June to 1 July 2022

This grant provides funds for students and early-career researchers to attend the 2022 Gordon Research Conference on Tribology: Understanding Sliding Interfaces to Master Tribological Systems Across Length Scales; Bates College, Lewiston, Maine; 25 June to 1 July 2022. Tribology is the science of friction and wear at the sliding contacts. Research and engineering efforts in tribology address the physical and chemical mechanisms underlying friction and wear, and aim to design materials, processes, and devices such that new solutions to technological challenges become available.

Advances in tribology help to reduce energy consumption by lowering friction, to prolong the lifetime and enhance the safety of mechanical systems by reducing wear, and to decrease harmful emissions in applications from vehicles to manufacturing through reduction of energy use. Tribology also impacts the life of humans and animals that move on earth.

The Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Tribology is a forum to exchange results of cutting-edge research amongst an interdisciplinary group of scientists and engineers who are at the forefront of addressing fundamental and applied challenges in this field. This award will promote participations of students and early-career researchers from diverse backgrounds at the GRC.

This subtitle “Understanding Sliding Interfaces to Master Tribological Systems Across Length Scales” reflects the fact a comprehensive understanding of tribological phenomena requires multidisciplinary knowledge encompassing a range of classical fields in science and engineering, including chemistry, physics, mechanical engineering, and materials science over multiple length scales. Most tribologists are trained in one of these areas with emphasis on either microscale (atomic, molecular, nano) or macroscale (system-level) phenomena or methodologies and then exposed to other fields or scales of tribology as they make transitions from schools to real-world situations.

Realizing the multidisciplinary and multiscale challenges in tribology is believed that the next significant breakthroughs are likely to be found at the interfaces between the classical trainings. To achieve these breakthroughs, the very diverse tribology community needs to come together to learn and discover together. The 2022 GRC will provide a venue for this discussion and learning.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.