Research into Green Tribology | page 3

New members to the nCATS team | page 4

Researching antifouling coatings | page 5

It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the 6th edition of the nCATS newsletter.

In this edition we report on our recent £3M platform grant in Green Tribology as well as highlighting some of our key research. We have also included an update on our new members – we have recently welcomed Dr Tomas Polcar to nCATS as lecturer in Tribogical Coatings taking our academic numbers up to 9 as well as a number of research students.

You will also find details of forthcoming events, seminars and short courses.

We hope that you find the newsletter an interesting read.

Professor Robert Wood, nCATS Director

Edition 6 | October 2011

nCATS Newsletter

TriboUK 14/15th March 2012

Thanks to an initial winning bid by Mostafa Soleimani, three nCATS students Mostafa, Daniel Sutton and Martin Evans will be hosting the Tribo-UK 2012 conference next spring at the University of Southampton.

Tribo-UK is an annual 2-day tribology conference which attracts around 50 student attendees from prestigious universities around the UK. The conference brings together leading young tribology research students and will be a great opportunity to showcase our research strengths.

Details about the conference and registration will be available soon.

Events

New research group“Biofilms and microbial communities (BMC)” is now a recognized research theme within the Institute for Life Sciences. The BMC research group embraces researchers within nCATS and other research groups spread across the University, the Hospital and the Oceanographic Centre, fostering interdisciplinary collaborations. Paul Stoodley presented “Communities Bridging Disciplines” at the recent inaugural BMC conference.

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Short coursesLM Windpower

nCATS Director vists LM Wind Power in Kolding, Denmark to establish research and training links in support of wind turbine blade design, manufacture and performance.

BMWA Tribology and Condition Monitoring training course will be given to personnel at the BMW Mini Production Plant in Oxford in November

KTN materials: Coatings event Bringing together research and industry to discuss perspectives of protective coatings.

Faraday discussion

The first Faraday Discussion in tribology (Faraday Discussions have been run since 1907) will aim to bring together world leading experts to discuss advances in key topic areas of tribology.Research highlights

Improving Oral Healthcare

PhD student Amir Rmaile is investigating how the mechanical properties of dental plaque biofilms can be manipulated by enzymatic, mechanical and chemical means for more effective tooth cleaning and improved oral health.

Working on a Philips Oral Healthcare PhD studentship Amir has used a high speed camera to reveal what happens when a micro drop of water travelling at up to 50 meters per second hits a biofilm plaque substitute in the interproximal space (the gap between the teeth).

In real life this is far quicker than the eye can see and the high speed movie can reveal the high speed impact. Amir is collaborating with Dario Carugo and Lorenzo Capreto from Dr. Xunli Zhang’s Microfluidics group to use computational fluid dynamics modelling in order to design even more effective plaque removal patterns.

Amir is supervised by nCATS Paul Stoodley and Julian Wharton along with Phil Thurner from the Bioengineering Sciences Research Group.

To view the film visit:

www.sonicare.com/professional/dp/SonicareVideos/BiofilmRemoval.aspx

Silicon nitride balls after compressive testing during a 3rd year individual project on crack detection using acoustic emissions.

Green Tribology

Our research in this area has recently received a financial boost with a £3M Green Tribology Platform Grant funded by the EPSRC (£1.5M) and supported by 8 Companies (£1.5M), Lloyds Register, Wartsila, TWI, Teer Coatings Ltd, NPL, International Paints, DSTL, BP Castrol.

Tribology is the essential underpinning science of lubrication, friction and wear and therefore is paramount to the efficient operation of numerous mechanical systems such as engines, gearboxes, human joint implants, manufacturing, sustainable energy and ship performance.

Green or environment-friendly tribology emphasizes the green or clean technology aspects of wear, friction and lubrication of interacting surfaces in relative motion in numerous mechanical systems. The interaction of these surfaces is important for energy and environmental sustainability.

Using tribological technology we can mimic nature, control friction and wear to reduce emissions and carbon footprint, enhance manufacturing techniques, reduce the environmental effects of lubrication and improve surface modification techniques, in addition to tribological aspects of green applications such as wind-power and tidal turbines.

Green tribology will also help address the need for increased resource responsibility and lower the health risks by creation of legislation compliant surfaces and coatings to replace potentially hazardous coatings.

Led by Principal Investigator, Professor Robert Wood and Co-Investigators Professor Frank Walsh and Dr Julian Wharton, nCATS and Professor Phillip Bartlett, Chemistry our multidisciplinary team includes experts in the fields of chemistry, tribology, mechanical engineering, surface science, material science and manufacturing.

Using a range of modelling and experimental approaches, we hope to develop green tribology solutions to improve environmental and tribological performance of tribosystems and new or enhanced manufacturing processes.

For example, superhydrophobic surfaces can reduce friction in low-load hydrodynamic lubrication by pairing hydrophobic/hydrophilic contacting surfaces so the liquid slips against the former under shear but adheres to the latter. Porous coatings with functionalised internal surfaces could be developed to encourage oil wetting and storage of oil in cylindrical wall pockets to control lubrication regime or avoid contact starvation. Cylindrical pore sizes can be varied between 2 nm to a few microns in size and any surface shape or roughness can be coated up to a thickness of 1 mm.

“Self healing, self sensing, biomimetic and multifunctional surfaces will be developed aimed at applications including drag reduction, anti-fouling, renewable energy generation, marine power transmission and smart machines.” Robert Wood,nCATS Director

Reducing waste, extending equipment life, improving quality of life and reducing the carbon footprint of mechanical systems are some of the key challenges facing society today. Research into green tribology is helping to address some of these issues.

We are delighted to welcome our new and visiting members of staff to nCATS.

New members to the nCATS research Team

Dr Tomas Polcar nCATS Nanotribology and Coatings lecturer Tomas obtained both MSc in Mechanical Engineering (2000) and PhD in Materials Science (2005) from the Czech Technical University in Prague. He worked then as a postdoctoral researcher in the SEG-CEMUC, University of Coimbra, Portugal. In 2008 he returned to the Czech Technical University in Prague as a lecturer and later as the Head of Advanced Materials Group at the Department of Control Engineering. His work is focused on the deposition and characterization of the thin films and coatings deposited by PVD, CVD, and related methods. Tomas is poineering novel design of self-lubricant low-friction coatings with adaptive nanostructure; he is known as well in the field of high temperature tribology of protective coatings.

Professor Bill Costerton Visiting Professor Professor J.W. “Bill” Costerton is Director of Microbial Research in the Department of Orthopedics, Allegheny General Hospital, Pittsburgh, PA. He has authored over 600 peer reviewed manuscripts and is listed as an ISI highly cited researcher. Bill has pioneered the biofilm paradigm which has revolutionized thinking in microbiology.

Prof David Rickerby, Rolls-Royce, Chief Scientist Surface Engineering, Visiting Professor

Dr David Rickerby is a Rolls-Royce Corporate Specialist and RR Fellow in Materials Surface Technology, where his role is to manage current and future surface engineering technologies to satisfy the customer specification in terms of engineering functionality, cost and quality. He has worked in the Coatings field for 30 years, initially at Harwell before joining RR in 1990. He has published over 120 papers on materials characterization, coatings performance in gas turbines and coating manufacturing processes, published two books and has some 16 patents in the field.

David will provide teaching material and case studies to our SESG6017 Surface Engineering Module and our planned new MSc in Advanced Tribology (2012/2013) as well as supporting several PhDs in nCATS. He would provide industrial aspects of coatings development and future needs and his appointment would allow a closer working arrangement between nCATS and RR to develop beyond the current KTP activity.

Professor Jane Wang Northwestern University, Visiting Professor

Professor Jane Wang is one of the leading American academics in the field of advanced multiscale modelling of tribological contacts and is a full professor at Northwestern University. Her expertise will complement modelling activity underway within nCATS and specifically underpin PhD students looking at modelling the wear and friction performance of DLC coatings. Jane’s research interests are in tribology, surface engineering, and model-based simulations of interfacial phenomena.

nCATS Martin Evans was awarded the 2011 Materials Literature Review Prize, for his review ‘White structure flaking in wind turbine gearbox bearings – effects of butterflies and white etching cracks’. The prize was sponsored by UK Centre for Materials Education. Martin joined nCATS in 2009 as a PhD student, looking into premature bearing failures in wind turbine gearboxes. His primary activities are conducting rolling contact tribological tests on bearing steels to investigate the drivers of premature failure modes, coupled with advanced post-analysis techniques. Martin has previously won the IMechE Project Award as an undergraduate student, and the 2010 IMechE Mission of Tribology Prize. Martin’s review will be published in a forthcoming special issue of Materials Science and Technology on the subject of bearing steels.

Visiting French Intern students This summer nCATS hosted 14 French MSc students from CESI, France. CESI was established in 1958 by five industrial companies (including RENAULT, TÉLÉMÉCANIQUE and SNECMA), and has run for over 50 years on training of managerial engineers. The students have carried out 7 research projects for 10-14 weeks, supervised by Dr Shuncai Wang, Chao Ma, Intan Othman, Dr John Low and Professors Robert Wood, Marco Starink and Philippa Reed, and three industry partners.

Dr. Rosella Grande Visiting Scientist Dr. Rosella Grande is from Professor Luigina Cellini’s group at the University “G. d’Annunzio” – Chieti, Italy. Rosella will be working on unravelling the relative importance of polymers which hold biofilm bacteria together, with the goal of discovering new strategies for curing biofilm infections. She will be continuing her collaboration with Drs. Paul Stoodley and Luanne Hall-Stoodley (Southampton University Hospital Trust).

Materials Literature Review Prize 2011 Winner

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FOUL-X-SPEL – Researching antifouling coatings

A new nCATS partnership project: FOUL-X-SPEL, is aiming to combat fouling through the development of an environmentally friendly surface protection.

nCATS researchers will be working in partnership with nine industry and academic partners from across Europe: Instituto Superior Technico (Portugal), Estaleiros Navais de Peniche, (Portugal), Hempel A/S (Denmark), Fundacion Tekniker (Spain), University of Strathclyde(United Kingdom) Instituto De Soldadura E Qualidade (Portugal), Carnival PLC (United Kingdom), Lloyd’s Register EMEA (United Kingdom), and the National Technical University of Athens (Greece).

The research team will modify normal boat hulls by developing and applying a new antifouling coating, fixing covalently bioactive molecules which provide biocide activity, to avoid leaching, will promote long-term surface protection.

This will require binding through a molecular bridge and study of the effective concentration of the bound active compounds. The new surface coating technology will aim to minimize the surface roughness and help to improve hydrodynamic properties of hulls, which in turn will make them more efficient.

The buildup or fouling of organic matter on marine vessels leads to reduced efficiency, increased drag and increased fuel consumption. The removal and prevention of vessel fouling is becoming more and more important in continued efforts to improve fuel consumption and efficiency.

A golden star tunicate growing on a nylon bolt holding an antifouling paint test panel in place.

www.southampton.ac.uk/ncats ncats@southampton.ac.uk