The importance of contact and surface effects in modern engineering and their combined effects has led the organisers to reconvene this 12th International Conference, which covers Computational Methods and Experiments in Surface and Contact Mechanics including Tribology. The series began in Southampton UK (1993); continued in Ferrara and Milan (1995); Oxford, UK and Madrid (1997); Stuttgart and Assissi (1999); Seville (2001); Crete (2003); Bologna (2005); New Forest (2007); the Algarve (2009); Malta (2011) and Siena (2013). The papers presented in these conferences are permanently archived in the eLibrary of the Wessex Institute (http://library.witpress.com), where they are easily accessible to the international scientific community. Central themes of the conference are surfaces, interfaces and thin films. In general, structural components fail by wear, corrosion and fatigue, that is to say affected and initiated by the surface conditions. Consequently, an appropriate approach is to modify the surface layer of a base material or coat it, so as to provide an enhanced performance. However, in many cases it is the combined effect of wear and corrosion that is damaging and as a result this contributes to an even larger complexity. The complexity of the tribological properties of materials and the economic aspects of friction and wear justify an increasing research effort. The surface treatment chosen should be suitably related to the problem to be solved. The necessary thickness of the coating depends largely on the applied loading and environmental conditions. This conference will address novel protective layers for advances in sliding wear and low friction. The range of topics to be discussed regarding Tribology embraces all aspects of concern including reliability, energy applications, advanced materials and corrosion. Tribology problems are essentially interdisciplinary. Engineers and scientists working in this field must be familiar with a wide range of issues, including surface mechanics, material characterization, chemical and biological processes, computer simulation, measurements and many others. The aim of the conference is to encourage international cooperation amongst scientists and engineers and to exchange new ideas. It deals with fundamental and applied concepts in the interdisciplinary fields of surface and contact engineering, including tribology, in particular focusing on the interplay between applied physics, materials science and computational methods.