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Andreas A. Polycarpou

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Kritzer Faculty Scholar

Professor

Contact Information

• Office: 342 Mechanical Engineering Building
• Mailing Address:
  

  342 Mechanical Engineering Building
  1206 West Green Street
  Urbana, IL 61801

• Phone Number: 217-244-1970
• Fax Number: 217-244-6534
• Email Address: polycarp AT illinois.edu
• Research Website: http://www.mechse.uiuc.edu/research/microtribodynamics/

Research Description

Professor Polycarpou is a tribologist who studies friction, adhesion, wear and the lubrication of interacting surfaces. He is particularly interested in microtribology, a field that is advancing the technology of magnetic storage hard-disk drives. He has demonstrated that the coupled modeling approach can be successfully used to predict steady-state dynamic friction without the use of empirical coefficients. He has also implemented adhesion models and compared their predictions in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and in magnetic storage. He published a series of papers on the asymmetric surface roughness of microsystems and has made significant contributions to predicting the hardness of thin films using nanoscratch techniques.

Continue reading about Prof. Polycarpou's research.