24th International Colloquium Tribology - January 2024 221 The European Tribology Centre Tribology as a Service towards a Sustainable World Franz Pirker 1 , Alberto Alberdi 1 , Xavier Borras 1* 1 i-TRIBOMAT: The European Tribology Centre, Wiener Neustadt, Austria * Corresponding author: xavier.borras@i-tribomat.eu 1. Introduction Tribology is relevant to everyone because it impacts various aspects of daily life. It affects the performance and efficiency of machines such as vehicles, appliances, and equipment, leading to cost savings and reduced environmental impact. Improved tribology results in a longer lifespan of products and a reduced maintenance costs. Additionally, tribology plays a crucial role in many industries, including transportation, manufacturing, and healthcare, directly affecting the economy and quality of life. A better understanding of tribology leads to advancements in technology, improved product design, lower environmental impact, and increased safety. The potential for saving energy and reducing costs was the key reason to define tribology as its own scientific discipline. Nowadays, digitalisation and the Green Deal are the drivers and challenges at the forefront of industrial development and take first place on the agenda of the European Union. The European Green Deal is a set of initiatives from policy side by the European Commission with the central aim to make Europe climate neutral in 2050. An impact assessed plan will also be implemented to increase the EU’s greenhouse gas emission reductions for 2030 to at least 50% and towards 55% compared with 1990 levels. Lowering the friction and wear by developing new material solutions for tribological applications has substantial environmental effects and directs towards a low carbon footprint future. The study carried out on the influence of tribology on global energy consumption, costs, and emissions, by Holmberg and Erdemir in 2017 [1], concluded that in total, about 23% (119 EJ) of the world’s total energy consumption and 8120 Mt/ year of CO 2 emissions originates from tribological contacts. Digitalization has been accurately defined as the use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities; it is the process of moving to a digital business. Very illustrative examples of the implementation of digital business models are the so called GAFAs. These companies are the biggest tech giants in the world, and they all have in common a platform where the customer can use and buy services easily and quickly on a transparent cost basis. In the technological field, there are the first attempts at digital business models such as SaaS (Software as a Service). The advantage of SaaS is that the client does not require to install any software or using a computer with high computing power to run simulations. 2. i-TRIBOMAT: The European Tribology Centre With the European H2020 research project i-TRIBOMAT („Intelligent Open Test Bed for Tribological Materials Characterisation “), the path towards TaaS - Tribology as a Service - is presented. i-TRIBOMAT: The European Tribology Centre was funded in February 2023 to support industry to contribute to the European Green Deal initiatives through a new digital business model. i-TRIBOMAT developed new digital services, which facilitate the rapid and cost-efficient selection of materials, as well as the prediction of the tribological performance of products regarding efficiency and lifetime. i-TRIBOMAT connects the entire tribological characterisation infrastructure of five leading European research centres in tribology and links it to an IT-platform using IoT technology. The clients can choose between over 100 different material and tribology characterisation tools. The data is centrally stored and further processed in a newly developed cloudbased material database. The clients can access their data any time and can easily request an advanced analysis or create their own reports. Without needing a particular expertise, clients can carry out simulations in virtual workrooms, allowing them to use their material data to predict operational characteristics rapidly and cost-efficiently, without constructing a prototype. All digital services can be customised and booked by the client on the web-based platform. The connection of infrastructures and the new digital services result in the emergence of Europe’s largest tribology centre, which offers and markets all services on a web-based platform. i-TRIBOMAT: The European Tribology Centre ’s core is a platform on which various services can be booked - from standardised tribometer tests and characterisation services to data driven services and simulations based on a SaaS concept. All these three kinds of services combined are representing the integrated workflow to upscale materials performance in a tribological component. If a customer wants to know how a new material performs in his component under operation, the material will be tribologically tested, the test results and test data will be stored in a secure manner, and ultimately integrated into simulation models seamlessly. These models upscale the performance of the component with the input of real test data. These leads to an accelerated component development process saving time and costs for the customer. 3. Success stories The following are examples of how the ETC infrastructure has been used to deliver relevant results to European companies in different sectors and fields of application. 222 24th International Colloquium Tribology - January 2024 The European Tribology Centre 3.1 Friction and wear performance of bronze-based materials in air and vacuum. At the request of the company Federal-Mogul DEVA GmbH, the friction and wear behaviour of different low friction copper-tin alloys with low-friction additives, such as graphite, were tested at room temperature in air and vacuum environments using the pin-on-disc testing technique, using Cu-Sn pins against X5CrNi18-10 (1.4301) steel discs. Typical uses of these materials are sliding or cylindrical bushing, joint bearings, and wind- & gas-turbines. Figure 1 shows the time evolution of the friction coefficient in three of these tests (test V4 in air, and tests V8 and V11 under vacuum, at 4 x 10-6 mbar). Figure 1: CoF time evolution 3.2 Friction and wear performance of PVD TiHfCN and TiN coatings. The main applications of these coatings are bearing support and guide rotating or oscillating machine elements and transfer loads between machine components. They must provide high precision and low friction to achieve high speeds while reducing heat generation, energy consumption and wear. In a study carried out for CITRA, the friction coefficient of TiN and TiHfCN PVD coatings applied on discs were tested against Al2O3 balls at 200 °C and 400 °C. Figure 2 shows how TiHfCN coatings improve friction behaviour in comparation with conventional TiN coatings. Figure 2: The friction evolution of (a) TiN coated discs and (b) TiHfCN coated discs sliding against Al2O3 balls in pin-on-disc tests at 200 °C temperature. 3.3 Performance of hydraulic, pneumatic, and rotary seals The objective of this study, carried out for the company EPI- DOR Seals and Rubber Technology was to see the effect of friction and wear in seals that are made in HPU, NBR, and FPM to avoid contamination (oil-ambient interface), and maximize the lifespan of their components. A Finite Elements (FE) model of the seal was developed using the seal profile and operating conditions given by the customer (Figure 3). Once a representative seal-shaft contact pressure was deduced, tribological experiments were carried out on pins of the three different sealing materials (Figure 4). Therefore. this service request counted with two stages: a) Downscaling (modelling). b) Experimental Testing. Figure 3: Finite Elements model of the reciprocating seal Figure 4: Frictional hysteresis loop resulting from the three sealing materials tested (HPU, NBR, FPM). References [1] K. Holmberg, A. Erdemir, Friction 5(3) 263 (2017)