Abstract: With the rapid development of ocean industry, all kinds of ocean equipments have been developed significantly. Tribological problems originated from these ocean equipments in harsh ocean environments are becoming new challenges for tribologists. The ocean environment and the properties of ocean water medium are analyzed. It is believed that harsh ocean environment makes the ocean development and operation of marine equipments in the marine environment suffered from coupling actions of various factors. The connotation of ocean tribology and its research scopes have been fully analyzed. The main research objects of ocean tribology are various ocean development and equipments operated in the marine environment. Researches concentrate on the interaction mechanism among corrosion, friction and other multidisciplinary, the long-term reliability under marine environmental dynamic changes, the erosion mechanism among marine biology, marine equipment movement and seals, and ocean engineering tribology problems etc. The research progresses of various tribological problems in ocean tribology aspects, including the ships, offshore structures, underwater vehicles and ocean renewable energy, have been reviewed and presented in the manuscript. Furthermore, the ocean tribology has been proposed as a new independent tribology branch with its own system.

Key words: Ocean environment, Ocean renewable energy, Offshore structure, Ship, Tribology, Underwater vehicle