2. Tribotronics or active tribology

Tribotronics therefore combines mechanical parts and electronic components to create active tribological systems. This is achieved not only through recording or continuous monitoring, but also by adjusting tribosystems to improve machine efficiency and service life.

One way of designing tribotronic systems (figure 2 ) is to implement control circuits or loops on passive machine elements (such as gears, fluid bearings and other bearings) to create active machine elements. Relevant process variables (tribosystem input variables and its output variables, losses and structure) of the control loop can include: