Talk: “What to Do about Friction and Its Adverse Impact on Energy and Environmental Sustainability?: A 21st Century Dilemma,” Prof. Ali Erdemir, Argonne National Laboratory, IL, USA, UNAM Conference Room, 3:40PM March 18 (EN)

Dear Colleagues and Students,

You are cordially invited to UNAM Nanocolloquium seminars focusing on advancements in the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology. The seminars bring us the most recent developments in these exciting fields.

The 6th talk of this term will be presented by Prof. Ali Erdemir* Title: What to Do about Friction and Its Adverse Impact on Energy and Environmental Sustainability?: A 21st Century Dilemma
Date: March 18, 2016 (Friday)
Time: 15:40
Place: UNAM Conference Room

ABSTRACT – To meet the needs of our highly mobile lifestyle, worldwide energy consumption has intensified in recent years and now stands at around 13,000 million tons of oil equivalent per year. With increasing population, mobility, and industrial activity, this number will undoubtedly increase further, especially in the transportation sector, which has already reached more than one billion motorized vehicles worldwide. It is hard to believe, but about one-third of the fuel’s energy in these vehicles is still consumed by friction, and on average, only about 20% of the fuel in our gas tanks is actually used to move our cars. Globally, nearly 500 million tons of fuel is lost to friction every year. In this talk, I will emphasize the importance of better understanding and control of friction which can lead to much reduced fuel consumption and CO2 emissions in future transportation systems. Along these lines, we have been persistently designing, developing, and implementing superlow-friction materials and coatings with great success in our lab and quite recently pioneered the development of a new breed of nanocomposite coatings that are able to extract their own carbon-based tribofilms from the lubricating oils to provide some of the lowest friction and wear coefficients. Work on graphene and other 2D materials has also been very successful and led to further insight into their superlow friction and wear mechanisms. Overall, development and implementation of these and other emerging materials technologies will be crucial for a sustainable transportation future that is also environmentally sensible.
* Argonne National Laboratory, IL, USA

Next week seminar:

March 24 – Savaş Tay, Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH Zurich,
Institute for Molecular Engineering, The University of Chicago

All interested are cordially invited!
http://unam.bilkent.edu.tr/