The use of deterministic surface texturing in car engine components has been proposed around three decades ago. Both experiments and simulation have shown that surface textures can beneficially affect friction and wear under dry friction, as well as under boundary, mixed, elastohydrodynamic, and full-film hydrodynamic lubrication, with substantial advancement in understanding the mechanisms involved. Despite this, the commercial use of surface texturing in car engines is still incipient. This talk will describe some issues that can help tackling this problem:
i. How can we produce textures cheaply and rapidly to make surface texturing cost-effective;
ii. How can we characterize the textures in more realistic ways, since this is fundamental to improve simulation under the whole range of lubrication regimes;
iii. How do the simulation results using more realistic characterization relate with engine bench tests? iv. How do the surface textures interact with the lubricant additives?