Description: Mechanical engineering is one of the oldest and most diverse branches of engineering and supports industrial development in such areas as manufacturing and production, energy generation and conversion, chemical engineering, transportation, automation, robotics, etc. Nowadays, the existence of general crisis enhances the increasing and continuous need for improved methods of determining the reliability and predicting the lifetime and quality of elements, machines and production systems. This is especially valid for the European countries, particularly in Danube region, and in Central and East European regions. Attention will be turned to the role of tribology for the large and complex scope of reliability engineering and the different tribology-related methods to improve reliability and quality, such as reliability design, component lifetime, condition monitoring, and diagnostics. One of the tasks of tribology is to study and find the advantages from a full investigation of industrial failures, and using tribological knowledge and understanding to establish the causes and the ways of healing them. It is frequently possible to improve reliability and quality substantially by not so complex procedures, once the real cause of the mechanism of the failure is revealed and understood. An illustration can be given in the following consideration. What is wear? The tribological interactions of a solid surface's exposed face with interfacing materials and environment results in loss of material from the surface. The process leading to loss of material is known as wear, one of the most menacing tribological processes. Wear can be minimized by modifying the surface properties of solids by one or more of surface engineering processes or by use of lubricants. Engineered surfaces extend the working life of both original and recycled and resurfaced equipments, thus saving large sums of money and leading to conservation of material, energy and the environment. Methodologies to minimize wear include systematic approaches to diagnose the wear and to prescribe appropriate solutions.

Contact Person: MSc Ivan Knežević
Period of realization: 2015 - 2016
ID: CIII-BG-0703-04-1516