For Second Time, Mechanical Engineering Professor Min Zou and Team Bring Home Al Sonntag Award

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From Left: Charles Miller, Min Zou and Dipankar Choudhury

Min Zou, professor of mechanical engineering chaired the 2021 STLE Virtual Annual Meeting & Exhibition, May 17-20. Her students presented six papers, and she and her team won the Al Sonntag Award for their continued research on lubricant coatings that will reduce the amount of friction for space mechanisms and aerospace applications.

According to its website, stle.org, "The Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE) is a professional technical society providing a selection of robust resources in technical research, education and professional development delivered through programming, courses, events and periodicals on topics most important to you: safety, energy usage, maintenance, natural resources, wear and productivity."

Tribology is an interdisciplinary field that encompass many fields, such as materials science and mechanical engineering; it is the study of science and engineering of surfaces that act together in relative motion. Tribology includes the study of friction, lubrication and wear.

The 2021 STLE Virtual Annual Meeting and Exhibition brought more than 1,100 industry professionals from 40 countries together to connect with 65 vendors displaying the latest products and services in the virtual trade show. Those who joined experienced technical presentations, professional development, and business networking.

Authors of six papers in six different categories were selected to receive the STLE's Publishing Awards. According to the STLE website, Publishing Awards are "Given in recognition of outstanding achievement in the field of tribology and lubrication. All publishing awards are for papers printed in Tribology Transactions, STLE's peer-reviewed journal."

Among those winners were three members of the U of A mechanical engineering family: senior graduate assistant Charles "Chaz" Miller, post-doctoral fellow Dipankar Choudhury, and professor Zou. This group won the Al Sonntag Award for their paper, "The Effects of Surface Roughness on the Durability of Polydopamine/PTFE Solid Lubricant Coatings on NiTiNOL 60" (2019, Vol. 62(5), pp. 919-929).

The goal of this research is to develop bio-inspired, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)-based solid lubricant coatings for an intermetallic compound 60NiTi made of nickel and titanium. 60NiTi is commonly referred to as NITINOL 60, and it is being considered for space mechanisms and aerospace applications. PTFE is well known for its trademarked brand name — Teflon, which is widely used for "non-stick" cookware.

Once the lubricant is coated over the component, it is evaluated for friction and wear reduction. Additionally, the effects of the substrate surface roughness on the tribological performance of the coating were investigated. The results showed that the coating on the component reduced the amount of friction by more than 85% and prevented wear of 60NiTi for thousands of rubbing cycles during accelerated tests. Furthermore, modifying the 60NiTi substrate surface through various grinding and polishing procedures increased the durability of the coating more than 30 times. The unique properties of this material have made it an attractive candidate for certain mechanical components that requires dry contact in NASA's critical space and aerospace applications. Successful research on this topic would enable improvements to be made to existing systems on the International Space Station (ISS) and would contribute to the ISS's mission of enabling long-term exploration of space and providing benefits to people on Earth. Additionally, the success of this research would enable new applications for 60NiTi as a sliding mechanical component.

"It is an honor to receive this award and the affirmation that our work is making valuable contributions to our field," Miller said, "We are grateful and inspired to pursue further advancements related to this topic."

This is the second time Zou and her students have been awarded the Al Sonntag Award.

"The first time was in 2013 and my then-Ph.D. student Samuel Beckford was the first author," Zou recalled. "My group has also won the Edmond E. Bisson Award in 2019; and the first author was my then-Ph.D. student Robert "Drew" Fleming, who is currently an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Arkansas State University."

The other students who presented papers at this year's meeting were: Shelby Maddox who presented two papers, Mahyar Afshar Mohajer, Sujan Ghosh and Julia Hoskins, and a postdoc Dipankar Choudhury.

More about the Al Sonntag Award: The Sonntag Award was established in 1983 to honor the STLE member or members authoring the best paper on solid lubricants published by the society during the year preceding the Annual Meeting.  It is named for a pioneer leader in the specialized field of solid lubricants.