Title: Improving surface tribological properties makes modern technologies more sustainable
Speaker: Prof. Giuseppe Carbone
Affiliation: Polytechnical University of Bari, Italy
Date: Friday April 14th
Time: 13:30
Room: EE01
Abstract:
The demand of adhesives, sealants, hydro-repellent surfaces, and frictional material is constantly growing every year. This increasing demand is associated with the requirements of extremely low environmental impact and much better durability a failure resistance of such engineering materials and components. Indeed, it is worth noting, that the annual losses due to adhesive failure and uncontrolled surface friction properties are approximately 500 billion € in the world. Our ability to manipulate and control adhesion, friction and hydro-repellence is still marginal. Therefore, a deeper understanding of such phenomena is a key point to mitigate the extensive economic losses and environmental impact. Adhesive/anti-adhesive and frictional materials are indeed employed in a wide range of industrial and technological applications, spanning several length-scales from the macro world – construction, motor vehicles, durables manufacturing – to the micro/nano world – MEMS/NEMS devices, microfluidics, biomedical and biotechnological systems, magnetic storage and recording systems. Depending on the type of application, adhesion, friction and wettability should be either increased or reduced. There is evidence that surface tribological properties can be significantly affected over a variety of length scales by controlling roughness, but also by adding micro- and nano-geometries at the interface, or micro voids. Multi-scale modelling and theoretical approaches aimed to identify proper geometrical sub-structural interfaces represent the fundamental first steps towards the fabrication of truly sustainable material. This seminar will report on the main investigations, carried out by the tribology research group at Politecnico di Bari – Italy, which may have a significant impact on sustainability of engineering devices.
Bio:
Giuseppe Carbone is currently Full Professor of Applied Mechanics and Head of the Department of Mechanics Mathematics and Management at Politecnico di Bari (Italy). In 2010 he founded the Tribology Lab. He has been Visiting Scientist at the Juelich Research Center (D) and at the Eindhoven University of Technology. He is currently permanent Academic Visitor at the Imperial College London and Visiting Scholar at University of North Texas. His scientific interests focus mainly on tribology, contact mechanics, adhesion biomimetics, superhydrophobicity, mechanical transmissions. Since 2015, he has been working on swarm intelligence and specifically on the mechanisms enabling the emergence of Collective Intelligence in complex systems. His research has been funded over the years with more than € 8 million. He serves as Associate Editor of Chaos Solitons and Fractals, and of the Journal Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering (Tribology Section). He is member of the Editorial Board of (i) Tribology International, (ii) Biomimetics, (iii) ISRN Tribology. He also served as Guest Editor, of Biomimetics, Coatings, Lubricants, and Applied Science. His H-index is 39 (source: Scopus). He authored about 270 publications, of which about 180 in archive journals indexed in Scopus and received about 5000 citations.