Tribology and Aluminium Matrix Composites

1. Introduction

Documents are available for bearing applications providing low friction even in early days of human existence (Dowson, 1979; Stachowiak, 2005) and available evidences suggest that the knowledge of friction was available since the late 16^th century. Tribology comes from a Greek word ‘Tribos’ which means ‘rubbing’ of surfaces. Rubbing of a surface may take place when it is in relative motion with another solid object or liquid or gas with solid particles. Under such situations friction and wear are observed and to minimize them some kind of lubrication (solid, fluid, gaseous) is required. Hence, tribology is the science and technology of wear, friction and lubrication because in any mechanical system all three are important. However, depending on situations and applications wear and friction both may be desirable or undesirable or one of these may be desirable and other one undesirable which becomes evident from the Table 1 (Stachawiak, 2005).

Though the evidences of knowledge of tribology are available for long but it has been very limited. Extensive knowledge has been gained only after Second World War. It becomes a need of the hour for tribologists to put extra effort in minimizing wear and friction. It is estimated that the losses as waste of energy due to friction and in the form of wear as production losses due to mechanical failure of machine components, are of the tune of millions of millions £ every year.