TLT: Please tell us about your STLE journey so far. Reflecting on your involvement, please discuss one or two most satisfactory experiences that you would like to share.
Zhang: I have been involved in STLE for 16 years. My STLE journey started at Walt Disney World (what a great place to start a journey!) in 2009. I presented my first conference presentation at the STLE Annual Meeting with strong support from the community and an uncertain feeling as a second-year graduate school student. In addition to meeting renowned tribologists and fellow students, I learned that a great career can be made from the field of tribology with systematical planning and execution. STLE is the center place to connect everything related to tribology, including fundamental tribology knowledge, technical trends, renowned tribologists from academia and industry, bright students, OEMs and lubricant and petroleum companies.
Since then, I tried my best to join most STLE annual meetings and contribute any way I can. I have to say that STLE resources and great tribologists with various backgrounds are great facilitators of my personal growth and career. I am very appreciative when I apply tribological fundamentals and innovations that I learned from the community to practical designs of hardware components.
In May 2024, I was humbled to start serving on the STLE Board of Directors. It is a great opportunity for me to work closely with STLE leadership and the rest of the board. My goal is to bring an OEM perspective to connect the field of tribology and the trend of hardware applications. More importantly, I want to do whatever I can to help younger generation students to bridge academia and practical applications.
TLT: How did the STLE certifications help you in your career? What advice would you give to young researchers and students working in this area of research?
Zhang: STLE certifications are not only seen as the prescreening process for employers to hire you, but also, more importantly, it is a learning process for you to establish a practical foundation of tribology and lubrication, which many students are simply lacking nowadays. Many cannot show the connection between academic tribology and practical tribology and lubrication.
STLE certifications did not directly lead to my current career status, but STLE certifications and systems are the key to building the foundation and systematical tribology knowledge for my career development. Employers prefer to hire engineers who can help them solve engineering challenges and advance their products. Having certifications alone does not help individuals achieve what employers want.
Therefore, I highly encourage the younger generation of students and professionals in our field to pursue STLE certifications, which could be accelerators of your tribology career. Meanwhile, please don’t think securing certifications is the end goal. More importantly, certifications help you build a foundation and pave the road for ongoing learning.
TLT: You have served as a TLT Technical Editor and are serving on various STLE committees. Please share a few key highlights and takeaways from your experiences from your involvement in terms of experience, leadership and learning.
Zhang: The most important task by serving STLE is to continue the key role in the field of tribology for the entire industry and continue the pipeline of the excellent young talents. It is very inspiring to see how much STLE leadership fights for and cares about the next generation in the field of tribology. Tribology is not a sexy area compared to other trendy fields nowadays. However, STLE leadership tries their best to pave the career road for younger generation tribologists and advocating tribology.
TLT: Can you share a specific challenge/research question that you found most satisfactory to tackle?
Zhang: One of my most satisfactory engineering challenges was to design the most optimized lubricant for drive unit lubrication and cooling. OEMs are currently adopting various mechanical designs for gearbox lubrication and electric motor cooling. It is seemingly a popular option to push for lower and lower fluid viscosity and cost-effective raw materials to further improve cooling efficiency, energy efficiency and build cost while it is not necessarily lowering overall system cost, especially factoring in the vehicle lifetime performance, maintenance and overall energy cost. My first project was to solve the complexity of electric vehicle lubrication and lubricant design, in terms of optimal fluid design, viscosity tuning and meeting durability requirements, while gaining system level cost. Energy efficiency breakdown of drive unit needs to be clearly understood first, as it is closely related to lubricant and lubrication design, along with existing challenges, which can be positively tackled by lubrication. Instead of a trial-and-error approach widely applied by traditional industries, I built internal proprietary simulation models to optimize lubricant and tribology designs through system design approach to balance conflicting hardware design and tribology design points. This is the foundation of electric vehicle lubricant development and innovative lubrication strategy to further improve energy efficiency and system durability.
TLT: What interdisciplinary level of training(s) would you advise young and aspiring tribologists to seek in order to prepare them well for a career in tribology? Any recommendations on how they could advance their knowledge/skills?
Zhang: I highly suggest young tribologists build a solid fundamental knowledge in mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, material science, chemistry and physics through undergraduate study.
The next step is to build tribology knowledge through advanced coursework during later stages of undergraduate study and/or graduate school such as tribology fundamentals (friction, wear and lubrication), polymer science, lubricant fundamentals and fluid film lubrication.
During graduate school, I encourage students to be immersed in STLE territory to learn academic and industry trends, apply previous knowledge to practical applications and solve them, learn tribology-related instruments and software, attend STLE events (through annual meetings, presentations, poster awards, webinars, education courses and more) and talk to fellow students and potential employers.
TLT: As we move forward through advanced materials and manufacturing along with digital manufacturing, where do you see the field going within the next five to 10 years? What would be the key challenges (hardware or software) that you feel that the community must pursue?
Zhang: Advanced materials must be complemented by proper design selection and manufacturability. As such, current trends in digital engineering and use of advanced simulations are heading in the right direction of choosing the right “design material manufacturing” strategy for a specific application, although key gaps remain. Advanced materials could be predicted and developed, although their manufacturability at the right scale must be addressed upfront. Similarly, simulation and modeling offer a great way to reduce the experimental trial and error, although the computing resources and physics-based modeling still could present a challenge to fully digitalize real-world conditions and scenarios.
Development of digital twins would be key in the next five to 10 years for condition monitoring and maintenance schedules in various on-field applications, although ensuring high-fidelity models and tools would be the primary challenge. The application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) relies on collecting and parsing big data; however, it must be able to identify “good data” to train models. With many of the tribological events being highly stochastic in nature, this brings a unique challenge and opportunity for this field.
Additionally, while advanced manufacturing methods like additive manufacturing open up new design opportunities, they also come with a unique set of challenges due to many dynamic factors and variables that could impact the reliability and scalability of these processes, and more application-oriented research and industry-academia partnerships could be impactful.
TLT: Continuing from the previous question, how confident are you that we will be able to reasonably address the previously mentioned challenges? What makes you think so?
Zhang: Considering the technological advancements, it seems like we will definitely be able to address at least some of the challenges in the next five- to 10-year timeframe. Realistically, I expect a specific niche tribological application to drive the rapid innovation and development in the field.
TLT: Any other particular notes/experiences you would like to share?
Zhang: In today’s fast-paced hardware engineering design world, due to the multi-disciplinary nature of tribology, without proper hardcore tribology training and in-depth first principle-based engineering thinking, it is extremely hard to visualize tribology-related engineering challenges. Such engineering challenges can be easily neglected during the design process and cost companies a significant amount of resources later with painful fixes, likely after product launch. Moreover, if tribology is properly applied through design process, the world’s energy consumption can be improved significantly through friction and wear reduction. It is every tribologist’s responsibility and the tribology community’s responsibility to properly apply tribology to the engineering design and keep emphasizing it. The foundation of tribology built by previous generations is very solid. It is our responsibility to properly find a way to train the younger generations for the future of tribology, to be able to connect their knowledge with real-world engineering challenges and let them think independently. For younger generations of tribologists, I highly encourage you to brace for the uncertainty of the engineering world with confidence from your knowledge and learnings, and enjoy your journey in the field of tribology and lubrication.
You can reach Wenyang Zhang at wenyzhang@tesla.com.