Duncan Dowson’s impact on industrial tribology

Abstract

Professor Duncan Dowson had close connections with industry throughout his academic career, and viewed industrial tribological challenges as problems to be solved and as a source of new ideas. Professor Dowson’s famous work on a numerical solution for the lubrication of an elastohydrodynamic line contact, with professor Higginson, was motivated by the need to better understand gear lubrication. These first calculations took 18 months to complete(!), and simpler correlation functions fitted to numerical simulations were developed to enable tribologists in academia and industry to apply elastohydrodynamic lubrication theory without the need for full scale models. Industrial partners such as Shell supplied high-pressure fluid properties required for the elastohydrodynamic calculations (such as the pressure coefficient of viscosity and the way in which lubricant density varies with pressure). Professor Dowson also famously served on the Jost Committee, which quantified, for the first time, the financial impact of tribology, and highlighted that investments in good tribological practices would pay for themselves many times over. It should be remembered that in setting up the Jost Committee, the UK Government specifically asked the committee ‘ to investigate the state of lubrication education and research and to establish the requirements of industry in this regard’. Personal memories of the significant collaborations that I was involved with, as an industrial research scientist, with Leeds University from the mid-1990s to around 2013, which predominantly focused on piston ring tribology are also included as is a brief discussion of the Leeds-Lyon Symposia on Tribology.