Tribology, the science of wear and friction, constitutes a historical competence domain within IREIS and HEF Group. This expertise allows use to answer the various industrial demands. The surface treatments permit, according to the friction, to higher the wear resistance, to reduce the friction (texturisation, DLC layers,…) or to enhance them (maintain of an assembling).
Since antiquity, Man had to learn how to master the friction phenomena. We know, for example, that Egyptians lubricated their sled skates to carry heavy loads. The first "real" tribological studies have been made on the 15th century with the works of the famous Leonardo da Vinci who has enunciated the first laws of this new science. A century later, the French Gustave Amontons and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb have contributed to the development of new tribological laws. It is in the 1950s that the tribological phenomena have been studied for the first time from a microscopic point of view by Denis Tabor.
IREIS develops coatings permitting to reduce the fiction between two materials in order to lower the warming and the energetic losses. Our numerous equipment allows to coat surfaces to reduce the friction resistance properties presenting values for the friction coefficient inferior to 0,1 in mixt regime or EHD (elastic-hydro-dynamic) in certain conditions (DLC layer in lubrificated environment). IREIS studies also the influence of the texturisation of these surfaces thanks to the Laser technology to improve those properties again who will find their application in domains like aerodynamics (reduction of the air friction).
IREIS disposes of a park with more than twenty friction and permanent wear test benches and can realize adaptations (even construct specific benches) on demand (click here to go to the presentation of tribometrics test facilities). More than 2000 studies in tribology have been led since the creation of HEF Group, conferring a unique expertise in this very particular domain.
To answer the lightering, esthetic or function adding needs, the multi-materials assembling of systems is generalizing. IREIS develops and perfections coatings realized by vacuum deposits, thermal projection deposits or by electrolytic deposits, but also the structure structuration to improve the mechanical strength and the properties of the multi-materials assembling realized physically (brazing, riveting, screwing,…) or chemically (pasting) in increasing the friction coefficient between two surfaces or by favoring the wettability of the adding materials.