This effort brings together chemistry, physics, engineering and statistics to develop a new class of lubricants composed of exceedingly-fine particles in different liquids that will improve upon the friction and wear reduction properties of traditional oil lubricants while significantly reducing their environmental impact. Effective control of friction, wear and adhesion has a vast range of applications that impact energy efficiency, national security, manufacturing, and the environment. Total frictional losses in a typical diesel engine, for example, exceed 10% of the total fuel energy. Reducing the losses to 1% would save roughly a billion gallons of diesel fuel in the U.S. alone. Furthermore, today's lubricants were developed in an era that focused on wear elimination over energy losses from friction, and did not consider environmental consequences. This effort also includes two public outreach activities, the first of which targets middle school students through job shadow opportunities and the second of which targets the general public through an entertaining citizen science learning module.
A new approach for developing fundamental design rules for material-liquid-nanoparticulate interfaces that optimize control of friction, adhesion and wear will be developed that combines theory, simulation, statistics, material synthesis and characterization. Rational design and effective control of these properties will be transformative across many fields. The studies will pioneer new ground, delving into the quantum and sub-nanoscale origins of everyday frictional phenomena observed at macroscopic length scales. The approach is motivated by the challenge of identifying correlations between combinations of highly heterogeneous properties and processing conditions that correspond to tribological performance. More specifically, the project combines synergetic efforts of four groups: 1) multi-physics modelling of interfacial phenomena including electrostatics; 2) statistical approaches for predicting tribological performance of multi-component systems; 3) experimental studies of friction and adhesion at both macroscopic and nanometer scale lengths; and (4) fabrication and chemical functionalization of nanostructured materials and molecular spectroscopy tailored to specific applications.
