Scientists at the University of Edinburgh (www.ed.ac.uk) are taking part in research to understand and control processes that lead to the corrosion and wear of materials in industry.

This degradation is estimated to cost the UK economy around £80 billion per annum, and the research could benefit sectors such as marine and automotive transport, aerospace, nuclear, oil and gas.

Researchers from the university’s School of Chemistry will work in partnership with BP, the Universities of Manchester, Leeds and Cambridge, and Imperial College London.

They will use experimental techniques to determine the interactions between surfaces and liquid lubricants at very high pressures and high shear rates (the research will involve using extreme-pressure diamond anvil cells and a range of chemical characterisation techniques).

They will then use computer simulations to visualise the molecular-level processes that occur at the interfaces between materials and liquid lubricants.

The results will be used to guide the development of new lubricants and surface coatings to mitigate the costly effects of surface degradation.