This special issue of the Industrial Lubrication and Tribology contains selected papers from the 10th International Conference on Tribology – BALKANTRIB’20, which was held on 20–22 May 2021.
The International Conference on Tribology – BALKANTRIB is supported by the Balkan Tribological Association and is organised every three years since 1993, each time in a different Balkan country. The previous conferences were held in Bulgaria (1993 and 2008), Greece (1996 and 2011), Romania (1999 and 2014), Turkey (2002 and 2017) and Serbia (2005). The 10th jubilee BALKANTRIB conference was organised in Belgrade, by the Serbian Tribology Society and the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.
The conference was planned to be held on 24–26 September 2020, but it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic continued to have a significant impact on the World, it was decided to go ahead with a virtual format of the conference, for the first time in its history.
Altogether, 93 papers of 277 authors from 33 countries (Argentina, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czechia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine and USA) have been accepted for conference. About 57 papers were submitted by the authors from Balkan countries and 36 papers by authors from the rest of the World. A total of 191 participants were registered through the online platform.
The conference program was significantly enriched by the four plenary lectures of renowned invited speakers: Prof Ali Erdemir (Texas A&M University, USA), Frontiers of superlubricity research: Recent developments and future prospects; Prof. Jean Michel Martin (University of Lyon, France), The supreme lubrication power of glycerol for green superlubricity; Univ-Prof Dr Carsten Gachot (Vienna University of Technology, Austria), On the in situ formation of transition metal disulphides in a lubricated tungsten nitride coating contact; Prof Andreas Almqvist (Luleå University of Technology, Sweden), Topological optimisation of slider bearing geometry.
During the Conference, a meeting of the Management Committee of the Balkan Tribological Association was held and Prof Aleksandar Vencl (University of Belgrade, Serbia) was elected as the President of the Balkan Tribological Association, while Assoc. Prof Alper Cerit (Erciyes University, Turkey) and Prof Emilia Assenova (Society of Bulgarian Tribologists, Bulgaria) were elected as the Vice presidents. It was also decided that the next, 11th International Conference on Tribology – BALKANTRIB’23 will be held in Bulgaria in 2023.
The Conference was sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia, Bruker, Valvoline Europe, Ellis Enterprises East d.o.o., Fluidotehnic d.o.o., Labtim SE d.o.o., Lubricants, Messer Tehnogas AD and Rtec Instruments.
After the standard peer review process, 10 papers were accepted for publication in this special issue of Industrial Lubrication and Tribology. In addition to the papers presented in this journal, some papers were selected for publication in Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part J: Journal of Engineering Tribology, FME Transactions, Tribology in Industry and Applied Engineering Letters.
As a Guest Editor, I hope that the papers in this special issue will serve as a valuable reference for researchers and tribologists in Balkan and around the World. I would also like to thank the Editor in Chief of Industrial Lubrication and Tribology and all reviewers for providing valuable comments to the authors.
