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About Our Staff and Students |
Gwidon W. Stachowiak: FIE Aust, MSTLE, MSEM: Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, The University of Western Australia and a leader of the Tribology Laboratory which he established in 1985. He has an MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering from Poznan Technical University, Poland (1972) and two PhD degrees from Poznan Technical University (1978) and Imperial College, University of London (1981). His main research thrust is in the area of tribology and is directed towards understanding and explaining phenomena taking place at the interface between two interacting real surfaces in relative motion. The projects currently conducted in his Laboratory range from the tribology of advanced ceramics to understanding of wear and lubrication mechanisms operating in synovial joints. His research interests are concentrated mainly on wear of materials, bio-tribology, machine condition monitoring, application of fractals in tribology, numerical characterisation and image analysis of particles.
Published more than 170 papers dealing mainly with tribological problems. The book 'Engineering Tribology' (co-authored with A.W. Batchelor) published by Elsevier in 1993, has been considered by the reviewers as the best book in the area of Tribology. The second edition of Engineering Tribology - published by Batterworth-Heinemann - will be available this year.
Member of the Editorial Board of the following international journals:
Grazyna B. Stachowiak: graduated with an MSc degree in Materials Engineering from Poznan Technical University, Poland (1981). She joined the Tribology Laboratory in 1986 as a research engineer. Her research interests are concentrated mainly in the areas of ceramic tribology, tribology of surface coatings and ferrography.
Pawel Podsiadlo, MSTLE: received an MSc degree in Electronic Engineering from Wroclaw Technical University, Poland (1990) and an MSc degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Western Australia (1994). Since 1994 he has been working at the Tribology Laboratory, UWA, as a research engineer and also towards his PhD degree. His research interests are concentrated mainly in the areas of numerical characterization and image analysis of wear surfaces and particles.
Dennis De Pellegrin: received his Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Western Australia in 1996. Since 1998 he has been working towards a PhD degree, studying the mechanisms of abrasive and erosive wear. The aim of his reasearch is to numerically characterise particles in terms of their abrasive potential.
Simon graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) and a Bachelor of Science (Chemistry) from the University of Western Australia (1996). He is currently studying for his PhD at the Tribology Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at UWA.
His research is in the wear mechanisms in synovial joints, which comprises most of the major articulating joints in the human body. Osteoarthritis is characterised by wear damage to the layer of articular cartilage that covers the joint surface, and this research aims to investigate and describe the mechanisms by which this wear occurs. Of particular interest is the role played by lipids in controlling wear and the relationship between mechanical wear and osteoarthritis. This work ultimately aims to develop methods which can be used in the diagnosis and prognosis of arthritic diseases.
Neil Fox
Neil Fox: graduated with a BE degree (first class Honours) and honours in Chemistry from the University of Western Australia (1998). He is currently studying for his PhD at the Tribology Laboratory, UWA. His research interests are oxidation stability in vegetable oils.
Nandang Suhendra
Nandang Suhendra: received his Sarjana (S-1) degree (1991) from Bandung Institute of Technology, ITB, Indonesia, and Masters degree from a Joint Masters Program between The University of Indonesia, UI and Queensland University of Technology, QUT, Australia (1998). Since March 2001, he has been studying for his PhD at the Tribology Laboratory, UWA. His research interest is in the wear mechanisms occurring in artificial joints. The fundamental aims of his project are: (i) to develop a computational model of the wear mechanism in total hip and total knee joint replacements; (ii) to design the geometrical parametric series of hip and knee joint implants and, (iii) to find the relationship between the material combinations used and wear and friction in artificial joints.