Farid Al-Bender, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Dr. Ir. Farid Al-Bender is Hon. Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at KU Leuven, where his main areas of research included air bearing design and fabrication, tribology, friction modelling and non-linear system dynamics. He is the Director of the consultancy bureau Air Bearing Precision Technology and founder of Leuven Air Bearings company (now LAB Motion systems) where he is a board member.
All chapters are written in an authoritative yet easy-to-read manner. The introduction of similarity parameters and scale effects in different chapters and a nice blend of experimental comparisons to theoretical analyses sprinkled throughout will appeal to graduate students and researchers. In summary, this comprehensive book on air bearings is a carefully written, methodical, insightful, and welcome contribution to the tribology literature. -Michael Khonsari, Journal of Tribology, November 2021. Air bearings are a technology originally developed by the computer industry and which over time has been adopted by precision machining and by very high speed rotating machines. The monographs dedicated to this subject can be counted on the fingers of one hand and the work of Farid Al Bender is an important and welcome contribution. This book gives at the same time solid theoretical bases, presents physical models, details their mathematical formulations and describes a large variety of technical solutions. The reader is delighted by the wealth of information grouped into 17 carefully chosen chapters. -Mihai Arghir, Tribology International, November 2021.