Organizers: Prof. Dr. Valentin Popov and Prof. Dr. Sergey Psakhie

Surface engineering is a topic of a huge practical importance. Both tribological properties of materials, friction and wear, and their "bulk strength" depend on properties of surfaces and can be influenced by surface treatments. The striking examples of interrelation between surface properties and the bulk strength of materials are the famous Rebinder and Ioffe effects, showing that changing of pure surface properties can influence the volume strength and toughness of materials sometimes by orders of magnitude. The macroscopic strength does depend not only on the internal material structure but also on the microscopic surface structure and on the environment (e.g. on presence of surface active liquids). Design of high strength materials has therefore always a "surface engineering component". The topics of the Workshop include theoretical and technological aspects of surface modification of materials in order to significantly improve their static, cyclic and dynamical strength, fracture toughness as well as their wear resistance.

Surface engineering is an extremely interdisciplinary field of research and technology. We intend to invite specialists from different areas of research (physics, tribology, materials science, engineering, numerical simulation methods, beam technologies) and industry in order to develop new theoretical, numerical, experimental and technological approaches for design of advanced materials with special emphasis on surface engineering.

- Physical backgrounds of interrelation between surface and bulk properties

- Beam technologies

- Ultrasonic surface modification

- Laser technologies

- Ion implantation

- Contact mechanics of coated materials and materials with modified surface

- Friction and wear processes in modified surface layers

- Continuum and particle simulation methods

- Technological applications