Academic and industrial tribology research in India—Current status

With the recent economic developments in India and a big thrust towards green technology and sustainability, tribology research has diversified from the industrial maintenance and lubricant centric tribology of few decades ago to new areas such as nanotribology, bio-tribology, smart coatings, wind turbine gears, green tribology etc.  In this paper, a brief overview of the current research activities in tribological research in India will be presented. The paper is divided into industrial and academic research, and also, their status of collaborations is explored. The industry has continued to work on the problems related to the maintenance of bearings, lubrication of machineries, mining equipment etc., but some new issues are presently being focused. Some of these examples are, problems related to wind turbine gears, hydrogen energy tribology, electric vehicle tribology, ship propeller, nuclear powerplant tribology, bio-tribology and so on. In the academic environment, several new topics are being researched in different university/institute research labs. Bio-tribology and coatings have gained much momentum in academic research but there is also sufficient push towards new and environmentally friendly lubricant and grease additives for non-ferrous alloys etc. This paper will also provide some of the issues faced in industrial and academic tribological research arenas in India and how perhaps those issues could be tackled in the near future.