i-TRIBOMAT

During the project i -TRIBOMAT, they noticed that some of the standards in the tribology field are insufficient, making it extremely difficult to compare the data from different testing institutes. After conducting a Round Robin Test with five of the leading tribology centers, they concluded that, even in the same laboratory, the results showed significant differences.

Why is this concerning?

It impossible to set a reference/benchmark on which to compare the novel advanced materials to the traditional ones. This significantly prevents the introduction of new materials to the market. Additionally, since they cannot compare results from different labs, the Big Data or Artificial Intelligence in tribology is totally unreliable and, until they harmonise their practices, merely an academic exercise.

The industry could vastly benefit from harmonising the tribology practices. Less testing, less waste, it would become straight forward to select the best material for their application. During the project they developed an open dataspace for tribology and material records (Tribology Universe: www.i-tribomat.eu). However, without harmonising their practices, having thousands of results stored in the cloud become pointless, if you cannot compare them.

Although standardisation would benefit many kinds of experiments, they decided to focus on one of the most used practices: “Reciprocating Friction Testing”.

To that aim, the Open Innovation Test Bed (OITB), The European Tribology Centre, is setting up a tribology challenge: https://i-tribomat.eu/tribology-challenge/. Many big laboratories have already decided to support this initiative.

A “best practices” when conducting “Reciprocating Friction Testing” will result from the challenge and, ideally, the best practices will be elevated to a new standard.

Reason for applying to HSbooster.eu services

They would like to know if the Tribology Challenge they are setting up (https://i-tribomat.eu/tribology-challenge/), is in-line with the HSBooster activities.

They have already received support from many universities and testign centres, in fact, this is becoming bigger than they anticipated and any support would be gladly appreciated. They have already contacted EURAMET and VAMAS seeking for funding/support for such a global initiative.

Groups supporting the Tribology Challenge (so far):

• AC2T research (Austria)
• Mondragon University (Spain)
• V-research (Austria)
• VTT (Finland)
• Luleå University of Technology (Sweden)
• Fundación Tekniker (Spain)
• TriboNet (The Netherlands)
• i-TRIBOMAT (Austria)
• University of Ghent (Belgium)
• Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (Germany)
• National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)

They also contacted some NMIs, namely, RISE, MIKES, BPT, VSL, NEN, PNL, CEM. They asked for their support.