Advancing Interfacial Science and Engineering

The field of tribology is an interdisciplinary science that invokes knowledge and experience over an extremely wide range of size and time scales. Interfaces play a key role in transmitting forces in sliding or rolling contacts and are often the locus of wear. In most cases, observation of these interfaces is limited by the bounding materials and provides challenges for scientists and engineers to understand and interpret the complex interactions in tribological processes. The 2008 Gordon Conference on Tribology's theme, Advancing Interfacial Science & Engineering, provides a venue to examine and understand the physics, mechanics and chemistry of buried interfaces in relative motion. We will be highlighting the most recent advances in instrumentation and simulation to visualize tribological contacts, as well as new approaches to understanding basic principles of contact phenomena. The conference speakers will include experts on fundamental physical and chemical processes, as well as experts in applied engineering mechanics. Essentially all tribology problems involve a combination of each of these areas; the strength of the Tribology Gordon conference is that it provides a unique opportunity to bring together experts in disparate fields to create new approaches for treating the complex problems tribology presents. The conference will be a lively and provocative meeting for discussion and exchange of new ideas between established intellectual leaders in tribology and scientists and engineers new to the field.