SKF has signed a five-year contract with Imperial College London’s Department of Mechanical Engineering to set up the next SKF University Technology Center on tribology.
The initial contract is for five years and will focus on research in the area of modeling in simulation of tribological systems. The prime objective of the cooperation is to further reduce friction and wear, and therefore extend the associated service life and environmental performance of SKF products.
The contract builds on the long relationship SKF has had with Imperial. The research program will be focused on further enhancement of SKF’s knowledge in the field of tribology. This will further reinforce SKF’s world leading position in modeling bearing performance, says Dr. Alan Begg, senior vice president of group technology. Leading the team at Imperial will be professor Hugh Spikes, who is head of the tribology research group and has published more than 200 refereed papers and patents in the field of tribology.
“We are very excited to be formalizing our relationship with SKF in this way,” says Spikes. “Not only will it help support our fundamental research work in tribology but it should also ensure that this research is rapidly applied to real applications, such as enabling rolling bearings, to operate with lower friction and thus lower energy consumption.”
The objective will be reached by developing a detailed understanding of lubricant chemistry, hydrodynamic and elasto-hydrodynamic lubrication, contact mechanics, wear and surface fatigue, flanked by computational modelling and theoretical studies.
The first University Technology Center was established last year with the University of Cambridge.
SKF is a leading global supplier in the areas of bearings, seals, mechatronics, services and lubrication systems. The group’s service offer includes technical support, maintenance services, engineering consultancy and training. SKF is represented in more than 130 countries and has 15,000 distributor locations worldwide. The group’s annual sales 2008 were SEK 63,361 million. The number of employees was 44,799.
