Home Page of Professor Q. Jane Wang

Research Overview

Power is transmitted through tribological interfaces of contact-rubbing components, where friction and surface wear damage cost about 30% of the world energy produced and 70-80% mechanical component failure. Such interfaces involve microscopic rough surfaces under intertwined multiscale solid, fluid, thermal, tribochemical interactions invisible to modern instruments and difficult to quantify. Tribological interfaces, formed under contact and relative motion, seen everywhere, embrace one of the mysteries in the history of science. However, they hold the keys to endurance, efficiency, and sustainability of modern industrial products. Professor Wang proposed the concept of virtual tribology in 2001, and her group pioneered computational mechanotribology,  contributed the first and a series of FFT-based accurate simulation tooling on making tribological interfaces “visible and transparent” to R&D. Her group studies tribological interfaces from integrated theories for contact and interfacial mechanics, numerical simulations, model-based designs of machine elements and their surfaces, failure-prevention methods, and novel lubrication technologies, working with industries towards future  technologies for energy efficient, highly reliable machinery.