national Centre for Advanced Tribology, Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton, UK
The national Centre for Advanced Tribology at Southampton (nCATS) was established within the School of Engineering Sciences during 2008, in collaboration with the Schools of Mathematics, Medicine, Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Electronics and Computer Science and the Statistical Sciences Research Institute. It is funded by EPSRC, 25 industrial partners and the University of Southampton trough an EPSRC Science and Innovation Award. nCATS will provide the next generation of underpinning technology for surfaces in relative motion within microsystems, biomedical engineering, engineering and engineering chemistry. It will link world class research groups in key disciplines at the University of Southampton to enhance capabilities in advanced computational and experimental Tribology. The centre will have strong links with industry and will pursue an active technology transfer agenda. The funding will allow a critical mass of academics to work together with Tribology as their main research topic and build a truly interdisciplinary team able to tackle the demand of modern engineering systems.
Biotribology research themes:
- Mathematical/computational modelling of the mechanobiology and tribology of skin
- Constitutive modelling and multi-scale mechanics of biological tissue structures and biomaterials
- Physics-based modelling of wear of UHMWPE for joint replacements and other biomedical polymers
- Mechanobiology and tribology of articular cartilage
- Tribology of biofilms for biomedical and engineering applications