Dr. Bernd Wetzel, director of the Institute for Composite Materials, University of Kaiserslautern, visited the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (LICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and carried out cooperative research at LICP for 15 days. During his stay, he delivered a lecture entitled Advanced measurement of tribological properties for sliding contacts.
In his report, Dr. Bernd Wetzel first gave a brief introduction to Institute for Composite Materials, including its research areas and achievements. Then he introduced the state-of the-art measurement techniques for friction coefficient, wear rate, thickness of friction film, real contact area, temperature at friction interface during the friction of materials.
Dr. Wetzel is Head of Materials Science Department and Research Director at the Institute for Composite Materials (IVW), University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. He graduated in Mechanical Engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT, Germany) in Materials Science, Damage Theory, and Energy Systems. In 2006 he received his PhD in Materials Science at the University of Kaiserslautern under the supervision of Prof. Klaus Friedrich in the field of “Polymer Nanocomposites”. In 2008 he joined the company SchaeferRolls (Germany) as Head of Composites R&D and Product Line, and returned to IVW in 2012 as Head of Materials Science. He performed research at various institutions, e.g. Caltech (Pasadena，USA), Sun Yat-Sen University (Guangzhou，China) and IIT (New Delhi, India). Dr. Wetzel is reviewer of various international journals in the fields of materials science, composites, and tribology. He has published more than 60 papers, gave more than 35 invited lectures and received various awards.