A beginning, not an end!

Dear STC Community, 

 First, congratulations and thanks! Our article is officially part of the September issue of Tribology Letters. (The press release about it is here.) We, the core organizing team, are honored that all of you participated. The final product far exceeded anything we anticipated when we cooked up the original idea. 

 Second, what should participants do next? Many of you asked what’s next; here’s what we suggest:

  • Consider using the insights. Remember those three key lessons that we all agreed on? (Section 5.) We hope you will use the concepts in your future work. And you should also feel free to reuse the data itself: for reference, for comparison, for re-analysis, etc. 

  • Consider using the surfaces. You all have samples of these surfaces – and you can request more if you need them. We hope these will serve as benchmark surfaces that can be used for qualifying equipment, training new people, making properties measurements, etc. 

  • Consider using Contact.Engineering. This is a free, full-service platform for analyzing, sharing, and publishing your data. (It was not created solely for this challenge.) So next time you run a set of experiments, consider using the site for topography analysis. If you publish a paper, then publish the corresponding topography measurements as a Digital Surface Twin (with DOI) on Contact.Engineering.

 

Third, please spread the word and get more people involved. We hope that this is a beginning, not the end, of this collaborative project. And while the author list of the initial publication is closed (at 150+), we welcome others to join the effort! 

 

Take care,

 

Tevis, Arushi, Simeona, Martin, and Lars

Learn more and get in touch at SurfaceTopographyChallenge.org