Abstract
THE Lubricants and Bearings Section of the Australian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research has recently been renamed the Tribophysics Section. This research section was established in 1939 to deal with the problems of friction, lubrication, bearings and wear, and a number of other problems which Australia was not equipped to handle, and which the outbreak of war and the expansion of secondary industries had rendered important. Dr. F. P. Bowden was retained by the Council to build up the Section. The University of Melbourne collaborated fully in this work, and laboratory accommodation was provided in the new buildings of the Chemistry Department. During the war years, the section was occupied with a variety of problems, such as the development and manufacture of aircraft bearings ; the development of cutting oils, of drawing fluids, of special lubricants and of flamethrower fuels ; studies of cylinder wear, of the wear of producer gas engines, and of the friction and wear in gun barrels ; investigations on the detonation of explosives by friction and by impact; the development of equipment for measuring the muzzle velocity of guns at sea, and other work for the Navy, Army and Air Force. It was also engaged in a number of more fundamental investigations, both physical and chemical, which included the study of friction and lubrication. Dr. S. H. Bastow has now taken charge of the Section and a permanent laboratory for it will be built in the University of Melbourne. The Section is maintaining close working collaboration with Dr. Bowden's new research laboratory on the physics and chemistry of rubbing solids in the Department of Physical Chemistry at Cambridge. A joint attack is being made on some problems, and there is an interchange of personnel between the Melbourne and Cambridge laboratories.
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Tribophysics Section, Australian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Nature 157, 544–545 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/157544d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/157544d0