In recognition of his outstanding achievements in tribology, particularly in the elucidation of the role of wear debris and the establishment of the “Third Body” concept.
A French national, Maurice Godet was born in 1930 at Geneva, Switzerland and is the son of an English mother and a French father. He received his entire engineering training in the USA, where he obtained a Bachelor of Engineering degree from New York University in 1951, followed by degrees of Master and Doctor of Engineering in 1952 and 1957 from Yale University. His original work was on experimental stress analysis.
In 1958, he joined Shell Development in California where, working on lubricant testing, he obtained his first contact with tribology. He concluded that the increase in load-carrying capacity of gears, noted at high speeds, was not due to oil relaxation effects, as it had been suggested earlier, but to elastohydrodynamic effects. He also showed how changes in test specimen geometry induced by wear, modified the hydrodynamic contact conditions, and made extrapolation from one test device to another unreliable.
In 1962 Maurice Godet returned to France where he founded the Laboratoire de Mecanique des Contacts at the Institut National des Sciences appliqués de Lyon (INSA), at a time when friction, lubrication and wear were not recognised as scientific subjects in France. In April 1988, an evaluation of his laboratory by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the leading research governmental body in France, voted 21 to nil that “it appreciated the vitality of the laboratory, the significance of the work undertaken, the attention given to industrial problems and its applications”.
The first years were spent setting up teams in both low pressure and high pressure lubrication with excursions into the areas of lubrication with liquid metals, high temperature work and lubricant testing. With J Frene and D Nicolas – now both Professors at the University of Poitiers, France – he spearheaded the low pressure work, which included turbulent lubrication, seal lubrication, misalignment and deformable bearings, bearing stability and others. For this work, he was awarded a DSc from the University of Paris in 1967. In 1968 he was appointed Professor of Mechanical Engineering at INSA.
Maurice Godet then turned his attention to “dry friction”, especially examining the conditions of contact mechanics. In 1971 he published the first of a long series of papers, many of which were written first with D Play and later with Y Berthier. These dealt with the role of interfacial films, later called “third bodies”. The “third body” approach attempts to transpose to “dry friction” problems the continuum approach, developed in the theory of hydrodynamic lubrication. It starts from the observation that where particles are necessarily trapped in contact areas, this leads first to separation of the two mating surfaces and thereafter to increased load-carrying capacity, due to particle motion within the contact. This fairly simple idea became the basis of a rather elaborate line of thought identifying some of the mechanical parameters governing wear, which had previously been ignored. This work was found valuable in understanding the difficulties encountered when interpreting laboratory results relative to industrial environments.
It pointed to the existence of the “third body” feed zones near the surfaces of the contacting bodies, whose dimensional control of wear suggested that a “good wear material combination is one which is ready to sacrifice its surface to save its volume”.
Professor Godet’s work and that of others in his laboratory has had a considerable influence on industry, in its sphere, probably more than any other university laboratory in France. Of particular importance were the projects involving elastohydrodynamic components (gears and bearings) for the aerospace industry. Both the Ariane rocket engine and the Airbus have benefited from tribology research executed in Professor Godet’s laboratory.
Amongst Professor Godet’s major characteristics are an international outlook and a desire to participate in technology transfer. He participated in many government bodies where he strongly promoted tribology in general, and the tribology laboratories in particular. He set up a strong University-Industry relationship and is an equally strong advocate of multi-disciplinary research. His laboratory welcomes around 250 visitors each year, mostly from Industry, while 90 per cent of the laboratory’s money comes from work done in conjunction with Industry.
At INSA Professor Godet offered the first compulsory course in tribology in France. The impact of Maurice Godet and of his colleagues of the laboratory on the development of tribology in France is considerable. Sixty INSA students follow a compulsory course in lubrication in the fourth year of training and 30 choose the “General Tribology” option given in the fifth and final year of training. Between 15 to 20 students choose to work in Tribology for their final engineering project.
Maurice Godet trained scientists in tribology for INSA and other French universities and industry and contributed largely to the creation of courses in tribology. A new book on lubrication of bearings, authored by four of his former students (now professors) and himself is expected to be published later this year.
His desire to become involved with the international tribology community led him to present papers on his work at numerous tribology conferences and to encourage his students and colleagues to do likewise. He was co-founder, with Professor Duncan Dowson, of the renowned Leeds-Lyon Symposium series, an annual event which has become one of the world’s major gathering of tribologists. In the USA he has participated in many meetings, including the National Science Foundation Symposium (June 1980), in which a small group of internationally-known tribologists were invited to discuss and recommend future directions for basic research in tribology, and the US Army Office Workshop on “the use of surface deformation models to predict tribological behaviour” held at Columbia University in 1986.
Professor Godet is the author of approximately 150 papers written in both French and English. He has received many honours including those of a Chevalier of the National Order of Merit, Officier of Palmes Academiques, the Letort Medal in 1986 by the Encouragement Society for National Industry. In 1987 he was awarded a Jacob Wallenberg Foundation Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.
Professor Godet has contributed much to the international development of tribology and has gained a well-deserved international reputation as an eminent researcher, organiser and practitioner of tribology. Professor Godet has shown all the qualities that a Tribology Gold Medal is meant to honour. He is indeed a worthy recipient of that award and of becoming the 1988 Tribology Laureate.