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Increased Sliding Friction of a Lubricated Soft Solid Using an Embedded Structure

Tribology Letters volume 70, Article number: 2 (2022) Cite this article

Abstract

Controlling the lubricated sliding friction of compliant contacts is important for many mechanical and biological systems. Multiphase materials have been shown to exhibit varied lubricated friction responses when compared to controls of just one phase of the material. In this work, we describe a structured two-phase material composed of a plastic mesh embedded in a compliant elastomer matrix. This embedded mesh structure (EMS) exhibits increased lubricated sliding friction for a number of load, velocity, and lubricant viscosity conditions. The observed friction enhancement appears to be a result of the EMS sample transitioning to the mixed lubrication regime under conditions in which the control is in the elastohydrodynamic lubrication regime. Simulations suggest that the difference in lubrication regimes for the EMS sample compared to the unstructured control comes from areas of high contact pressure induced by the increased local contact stiffness of the material near the embedded mesh. We hypothesize that these areas of high pressure can lead to the destabilization of lubricant films under conditions where the control films are stable, leading to the difference in lubrication regime behaviors observed.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Kelly Schultz for use of the rheometer to measure PDMS Young’s modulus.

Funding

We acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation through the Grant LEAP-HI: CMMI-1854572.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA

    Nichole Moyle, Hao Dong & Anand Jagota

  2. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Haibin Wu & Chung-Yuen Hui

  3. Michelin North America Inc., Greenville, SC, USA

    Constantine Y. Khripin

  4. Department of Bioengineering, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA

    Anand Jagota

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  1. Nichole Moyle
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Correspondence to Anand Jagota.

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Moyle, N., Dong, H., Wu, H. et al. Increased Sliding Friction of a Lubricated Soft Solid Using an Embedded Structure. Tribol Lett 70, 2 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-021-01540-9

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