At the invitation of the Centre of Excellence for Tribology, experts and interested parties in friction, wear and lubrication technology (tribology) met at the Technology and Research Centre (TFZ) Wiener Neustadt as part of the “Austrian Tribology Week 2015” organised by the Austrian Tribological Society (ÖTG, recently with its secretariat based at the TFZ) and sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology and the Province of Lower Austria. In different event modules (preparatory technical seminar, Viennano ’15, ÖTG Symposium 2015, XTribology Partner Day), the participants from 13 nations were able to inform themselves about and discuss current topics ranging from nanotribology to wear-resistant material combinations and current lubricant developments to special technological processes of wear protection. The laboratories of AC2T research GmbH, Aerospace & Advanced Composites GmbH and OFI Technologie & Innovation GmbH were open to the conference participants during laboratory tours.
The reception in the town hall of Wiener Neustadt on 24 November 2015, hosted by Mayor Klaus SCHNEEBERGER and ecoplus Niederösterreichs Wirtschaftsagentur GmbH, was particularly conducive to informal exchange among tribologists and networking. Representing the Mayor, First Deputy Mayor Dr. Christian STOCKER welcomed 40 conference participants under the leadership of Prof. Wilfried J. BARTZ (Chairman of Viennano ’15), as well as the leadership of the ÖTG and AC²T respectively (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Friedrich FRANEK, Dr. Reinhard POLAK, Dr. Andreas PAUSCHITZ, Dr. Ewald BADISCH).
In the 2-day Vienanno block, there was a strong presence of top-class lecturers from abroad, namely Professors (in alphabetical order) Koshi ADACHI (Tohoku University, JP), Ali ERDEMIR (Argonne National Laboratory, USA), Feodor M. BORODICH (Cardiff University, GB), Sergej V. FEDOROV, (Kaliningrad State Technical University, RU), Ilse C. GEBESHUBER (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, MY, and TU Wien, AT), Stephen HSU (George Washington University, USA), Ernst MEYER (University of Basel, CH), Zygmunt RYMUZA (Warsaw University of Technology, PL) and Nicholas SPENCER (ETH Zurich, CH).
