The main theme in the discussion meetings, which typically last two days and attract 20 to 50 participants, is informality and the freedom to discuss new, and in some cases controversial, results and ideas in a friendly forum. For the initial meetings, proceedings are not published, although speakers produce short abstracts of their presentations which are circulated to members of the group after each meeting; contributors are, however, encouraged to submit their work for journal publication where appropriate. However, nowadays contributors are invited to produce a manuscript of their communications, and the proceedings of each meeting are free available from the IRG-OEM WEB page.
Each meeting tries to address a particular topic within the main interests of the group, although contributions within the field of wear, of any type of material, are always welcome. Topics which have received particular attention in the past, and will continue to do so, include: all aspects of wear and friction testing; failure criteria and mechanisms for lubricated, concentrated contacts; methods for wear control, including materials characterisation and numerical modelling; and methods for presentation and analysis of tribological data. The IRG has also organised collaborative projects among its members, notably leading to a multilingual glossary of tribological terms, and the IRG transition diagram for representing the behaviour of lubricated contacts.
There is no membership fee, and the group is self-financing through the modest registration fees charged for meetings, and the generosity of organisations, which act as hosts. |
