Tribological

Tribology is the science and engineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion. It includes the study and application of the principles of friction, lubrication and wear. Tribology is highly interdisciplinary in nature and draws upon several academic areas including: physics, chemistry, materials science and engineering.

The word tribology derives from the Greek root τριβ- of the verb , , "I rub" in classic Greek and the suffix -logy from , "study of", "knowledge of". It was coined by Peter Jost in 1966, who produced an eponymous report which highlighted the cost of friction, wear and corrosion to the UK economy.

Despite the relatively recent naming of the field of tribology, quantitative studies of friction can be traced as far back as 1493, when Leonardo da Vinci first noted the two fundamental ‘laws’ of friction. According to da Vinci, the frictional resistance was the same for two different objects of the same weight but making contacts over different widths and lengths. He also observed that the force needed to overcome friction doubles when the weight doubles. However, da Vinci's findings remained unpublished in his notebooks.

The two fundamental ‘laws’ of friction were first published (in 1699) by Guillaume Amontons, with whose name they are now usually associated, they state that:

Although not universally applicable, these simple statements hold for a surprisingly wide range of systems. These laws were further developed by Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (in 1785), who noticed that sliding (kinetic) friction is independent of the sliding velocity.

...
Wikipedia