In most tribological applications liquid or grease based lubricants are used to facilitate the
relative motion of solid bodies to minimize friction and wear between interacting surfaces. The
challenges for liquid lubricants arise in extreme environmental conditions such as very high
or low temperatures vacuum radiation and extreme contact pressure. At these conditions
solid lubricants may be the alternative choice which can help to decrease friction and wear
without incorporating liquid lubricants. Challenges with solid lubricants are to maintain a
continuous supply of solid lubricants on the contact surfaces to act as lubricous layer between
two sliding surfaces. Such a continuous supply of solid lubricant is more easily maintained in
the case of liquid lubricants when compared to solid lubricants. The most innovative
development to ensure a continuous supply of solid lubricant to the contact surface during
sliding is to introduce solid lubricant as reinforcement into the matrix of one of the sliding
components. Composite materials are engineered or naturally occurring materials which contain
two or more distinct constituents with significantly different chemical physical and
mechanical properties. Composites consist of reinforcement and matrix (metal polymer and
ceramics). Among various reinforcements recent emerging material solid lubricant is found to
have many favorable attributes such as good self-lubricant property. Self-lubrication is the
ability of material to transfer embedded solid lubricants to the contact surface to decrease
wear rate and friction in the absence of an external lubricant. Self-lubricating metal matrix
composites (SLMMCs) are an important category of engineering materials that are increasingly
replacing a number of conventional materials in the automotive aerospace and marine
industries due to superior tribological properties. In SLMMCs solid lubricant materials
including carbonous materials molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN)
are embedded into the metal matrices as reinforcements to manufacture a novel material with
attractive self-lubricating properties. Several studies have been investigated the tribological
properties of self-lubricating materials. This book fills that gap to have a reference book
about self-lubricating materials and their properties to help scientists engineers and
industries. This book will try to discuss technically about self-lubricating materials and
their properties and the applications for industries. The chapters will be written by
authoritative expertise in the field. Additionally this book will demonstrate fundamental
study and most advanced innovations in self-lubricating materials as regards to friction and
wear. The chapters also include tribological properties of composites and coatings and some
practical application of self-lubricating materials.
