The Tribology Trust's 2008 Gold Medal has been awarded to Eustathios 'Stathis' Ioannides, SKF Group Director for Product Engineering. The Tribology Trust is administered by the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers [website].

Tribology is the study of friction, wear, and lubrication.

Mr. Ioannides, who divides his time between the Netherlands and the UK, is being honored for a body of work that includes developments in the theory and practice in the area of rolling contact fatigue, and fathering the now-ubiquitous SKF Life Theory into codification as ISO 281:2007. Mr. Ioannides joined SKF in 1981 and first published on fatigue life in 1984.

He has been the driving force behind the development of
ISO 281:2007 Rolling bearings -- Dynamic load ratings and rating life, which fundamentally replaced ISO 281:1990, revised in 2000. It is also known by its German standard, DIN ISO 281. Every major bearing manufacturer worldwide is committed to the ISO 281:2007 standard.

ISO 281:2007 is based various revisions of SKF life theory work of Ioannides and Harris, begun in 1985. Mr. Ioannides' work was the first to introduce the presence of a fatigue limit as a major factor affecting bearing life. ISO 281 builds on that with recent discoveries quantifying the effects of lubrication and contamination.

Coincidentally, ISO 281 brings SKF's standards involvement full circle. In 1962, the first ISO standard for bearing life calculation codified the groundbreaking work of Arvid Palmgren and Gustaf Lundberg.

Professor Ioannides holds a Masters Degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from Technical University of Athens; and a Masters and PhD in Applied Mathematics from Imperial College London. Alongside his work at SKF, he is a visiting professor of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College.

Mr. Ioannides said: "Tribology is an important area of scientific and technical knowledge, not least for the role it can play in energy-saving, the urgent issue of our times. I feel highly honored that my peers have considered me for this prestigious award."

Chairman of the Tribology Trust, Dr. Jost, said: "Professor Ioannides is an outstanding person who has succeeded in combining the theory, technology and application of Tribology. In doing so, he has achieved world recognition and this award honors his success."

SKF President and CEO, Tom Johnstone, said: "Excellence in tribology is a fundamental cornerstone to excellence in the design, development and application of bearing-related products and solutions for many industries. With this award, Stathis is continuing the great tradition of knowledge experts that has made SKF the company it is today. We are immensely pleased that he has been recognized in this way, and extremely proud to have him as part of our product development team these last 15 years."

Established in 1847, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers currently has 80,000 members across 120 countries, representing engineers involved in diverse fields such as automotive, rail, aircraft and aerospace, medical, energy, drilling, mining, construction, and many other industries.

SKF describes its research into rolling contact fatigue:

The research deals with developing metal physics based models for material changes during fatigue and the implications of metal fatigue in actual bearing applications such as cars, trains, planes, (wind) turbines and many other machines. Modeling fatigue processes is carried out with a wide variety of techniques, ranging from atomistic simulations to finite element calculations.

There is also a strong experimental component in the work on rolling contact fatigue within SKF. In this work the main topic is the development of X-ray diffraction based methods to detect fatigue in bearing steel. Experiments that are executed in this area go from laboratory scale to high-energy physics such as synchrotron measurements and neutron diffraction. Alternative methods based on for instance electro-magnetism are also covered in the research activities on fatigue detection and description.