Texture-induced modulations of friction force: the fingerprint effect

Abstract

Dry solid friction is often accompanied by force modulations originating from stick-slip instabilities. Here a distinct, quasi-static mechanism is evidenced leading to quasi-periodic force oscillations during sliding contact between an elastomer block, whose surface is patterned with parallel grooves, and finely abraded glass slides. The dominant oscillation frequency is set by the ratio between the sliding velocity and the period of the grooves. A mechanical model is proposed that provides a quantitative prediction for the amplitude of the force modulations as a function of the normal load, the period of the grooves and the roughness characteristics of the substrate. The model's main ingredient is the non-linearity of the friction law. Since such non-linearity is ubiquitous for soft solids, this "fingerprint effect" should be relevant to a large class of frictional configurations and might in particular have important consequences in human (or humanoid) active digital touch.

4 pages

References in corpus (3)

• Slippage of water past superhydrophobic carbon nanotube forests in microchannels
• The dependence of the dry friction threshold on rupture dynamics
• On the elastic energy and stress correlation in the contact between elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces

Cited by in corpus (4)

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