Learn / Tribology
Tribology
Contact, friction,
wear, and the
mechanisms underneath.
Learn how surfaces interact, how wear mechanisms are identified, how friction data should be interpreted, and how real contact conditions control what you observe.
1 · Start here
Build the foundation
StoryThe Mountain Range You Cannot SeeA scrolling illustrated story about tribology: zoom into a contact until the real touching area appears, follow one asperity through its working life, watch a wear particle get born, and read the Archard ledger of a surface slowly exporting itself.GuideAsperities & the Real Area of ContactInteractive contact mechanics: single-asperity Hertz geometries, elastic to fully plastic transition, Greenwood-Williamson rough surface contact, and JKR/DMT adhesion. See why real contact area is a thousand times smaller than the area you can see.GuideHow to Measure WearWhat wear rate, specific wear rate and the wear coefficient K each mean, how Archard's equation links them, and two ways to get a wear depth: from K, or from a measured scar (ASTM G99). Six wear mechanisms, interactive.
2 · Learn the core
Master the key concepts
3 · Use a tool
Work with your data
4 · Solve a problem
Troubleshoot real data
5 · Go deeper
Research-level topics
Advanced topics for this field are being written; the foundation pages above are current.
6 · All resources
Every Tribology page
- StoryThe Mountain Range You Cannot SeeA scrolling illustrated story about tribology: zoom into a contact until the real touching area appears, follow one asperity through its working life, watch a wear particle get born, and read the Archard ledger of a surface slowly exporting itself.
- GuideAsperities & the Real Area of ContactInteractive contact mechanics: single-asperity Hertz geometries, elastic to fully plastic transition, Greenwood-Williamson rough surface contact, and JKR/DMT adhesion. See why real contact area is a thousand times smaller than the area you can see.
- GuideHow to Measure WearWhat wear rate, specific wear rate and the wear coefficient K each mean, how Archard's equation links them, and two ways to get a wear depth: from K, or from a measured scar (ASTM G99). Six wear mechanisms, interactive.
- ToolWear Rate CalculatorTurn what you measured into every wear rate at once: a profile area, a mass loss, a ball scar diameter or a groove, with the load and the sliding distance, giving the wear rate, the specific wear rate in mm3/N.m, the dimensionless Archard coefficient and the wear depth, with the arithmetic on show. Includes the unit map for the forms these appear in and what ASTM G99 does and does not fix.
- FAQTribology, Indentation & Scratch FAQTroubleshooting FAQ for contact mechanics, wear, nanoindentation and scratch testing: real contact area, wear-mechanism competition and wear depth, Oliver-Pharr hardness and its error budget, size effects, loading-mode choice, and scratch critical loads and hardness conventions.
Other fields: TEM & STEM · EBSD & TKD · Atom Probe · Crystallography · Phase Transformations · Nanoindentation · Scratch Testing · In-situ / FIB.