Preface to the Special Issue on WTC 2017

Abstract

The 6th World Tribology Congress (WTC 2017) was held from September 17 to 22, 2017, in Beijing. It was hosted by Chinese Tribology Institute (CTI) and organized by the State Key Laboratory of Tribology of Tsingnua University. It was the largest WTC ever since the first one was held in London in 1997, with more than 1200 papers from all over the world presented (including oral and poster presentations). The great success of WTC 2017 was celebrated not only by the participants but also by the beautiful weather in Beijing during the week.CTI kindly accepted Tribology Online as one of the official journals for publication, and the Japanese Society of Tribologists (JAST) called for papers for WTC Special Issues. We have received more than twenty papers from eleven countries. These papers have been peer reviewed as usual, and the papers accepted for publication is published in this Special Issue, Part 1, and in the Special Issue, Part 2, to be released later this year.The papers in this issue are from materials tribology to lubricants and lubrication mechanisms, and from fundamental studies to practical studies. Although the number of the papers included in this issue is not many, they reflect a wide spectrum of the tribology researches and the internationally active atmosphere of this area.On behalf of the editorial board of Tribology Online, the Editor-in-Chief would sincerely like to thank all the contributors to this Special Issue, and hope the readers find these papers interesting and useful.