McCormick Faculty Edit Encyclopedia of Tribology

After several years of work, two professors from Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science have completed a new, six-volume edition of the Springer Encyclopedia of Tribology — the authoritative reference of tribology, the science and engineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion.

Co-chief editors Q. Jane Wang, professor of mechanical engineering, and Yip-Wah Chung, professor of materials science and engineering and (by courtesy) mechanical engineering, worked with 36 section editors on the project, including McCormick’s Jian Cao, professor of mechanical engineering and (by courtesy) civil and environmental engineering; Kornel Ehmann, professor of mechanical engineering; Leon M. Keer, Walter P. Murphy Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering; and Xiaoqing Jin, former senior research associate at Northwestern’s Center for Surface Engineering and Tribology.

Also contributing were 584 authors, numerous reviewers, and a group of production editors from universities, industries, government laboratories, and research institutes around the world.

With 649 entries in 30 technical areas, the Encyclopedia of Tribology covers not only traditional subjects, such as friction, wear, and lubrication, but also topics related to biomedical and biomechanical designs, condition-based monitoring, molecular dynamics simulations, and materials science. Its scope spans from tribological science rooted in classical theories to modern surface and interfacial engineering, from microscale contacts in components to automotive and aerospace tribology, from tribological designs to manufacturing processes, from instrumentations to testing techniques, and from analytical-numerical methods to technological innovations.  

In addition to the hard copy, the Encyclopedia of Tribology has an online version, which allows the team to modify and enrich its content as the field continues to evolve.

Wang received her PhD in mechanical engineering from Northwestern in 1993 and joined the University’s faculty in 1998. She is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE). She has won STLE’s Surface Engineering Technical Committee Best Paper Award and received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, among other honors. Wang’s research interests are in tribology, surface engineering, and model-based simulations of interfacial phenomena.

Chung has served as director of Northwestern’s Center for Engineering Tribology and as program officer in surface engineering and materials design in the Civil and Mechanical Systems Division at the National Science Foundation. He has served on the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and is currently a member of the Hong Kong University Grants Committee. He has published 200 papers in surface science, thin films, tribology, and alloy design, two textbooks (Practical Guide to Surface Science and Spectroscopy and Introduction to Materials Science and Engineering), and one monograph (“Micro- and Nanoscale Phenomena in Tribology”).