This book discusses the tribological, rheological and optical properties of liquid-crystal nanomaterials as well as lubricant media. It also describes the formation of liquid-crystal materials and the application of cholesteric liquid-crystal compounds in technical friction units and in human and animal joints. Further, it shows the connection between the tribological and other physical properties of liquid-crystal cholesterol compounds and develops a lubricity conceptual model of cholesteric-nematic, liquid-crystalline nanostructures on the basis of physical and energetic interpretations. This general model is valid for all surfaces and friction pairs, including biopolymers, and could lead to applications of cholesteric liquid-crystalline nanomaterials in different friction units and tribosystems as well as in the treatment of joint diseases.

Professor Nikolai K. Myshkin is the director and head of the Tribology Department at the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus V.A. Belyi Metal-Polymer Research Institute. He received his master's degree in Electromechanical Engineering in 1971, Ph.D. degree from the Institute for Problems in Mechanics at the USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow in 1977, and the D.Sc. degree in Tribology in 1985. Since 1991 he has been a full professor of materials science. After being a corresponding member of the Belarus National Academy of Sciences, he became a full member in 2009. He received the National Award for young scientists in USSR in 1982, the Award of Russian Government in Science and Technology in 2004, and the Award for Best Research at Belarus National Academy of Sciences in 2003 and 2011. His international activities include: vice-president of the International Tribology Council, deputy editor of the Journal of Friction and Wear, and he is a member of the editorial boards of various national and international journals: Mechanics of Materials, Machines and Mechanisms; Friction and Lubrication in Machines and Mechanisms, Materials, Technologies, and Tools; Applied Mechanics and Engineering; Tribology Letters; and Industrial Lubrication and Tribology. He has co-authored more than 20 monographs, textbooks and chapters in tribology and materials, more than 300 technical papers and 60 patents in Belarus and Russia, the USA, Europe and Asia.