Abstract
Relationship between contact size (A) and static friction (f) has been studied for rigid crystalline systems. We built a series of systems with two identical surfaces but different orientations and investigated the effects of the size and shape of the contact area on static friction. In these systems, there are numerous nontrivial commensurate contacts. Our results confirmed that the relationship between A and f was determined by both commensurability and shape of the contact. For commensurate contacts, f ∝ A independent of the shape. For incommensurate contacts, generally f ∝ A0 for regular shapes or f ∝ A1/4 for irregular shapes; however, in very few cases of regular shapes, f ∝ A1/2. Moreover, in above systems, commensurability of a contact can be easily changed by a perturbation of the misfit angle. Therefore, if the perturbation caused by the lateral force and the deformation of the surface are considered (as is the case in real systems), further research is necessary.
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Acknowledgements
This study is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51675395), Special Fund for Outstanding Young and Middle-aged Scientific and Technological Innovation Team in the University from Hubei Province (No. T201709), and Doctoral Startup Fund for Scientific Research at Wuhan Polytechnic University (2014RZ31).
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Hao CHEN. He received his bachelor and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from Peking University, China, in 2000 and 2006, respectively. He joined Wuhan Polytechnic University in 2013. His research mainly focuses on molecular dynamics simulations of nanotribology.
Xinlei GAO. She received her M.S. degree in organic chemistry from Huazhong Normal University in 1996, and her Ph.D. degree in mechanical design and theory from Wuhan Research Institute of Materials Protection in 2006. She joined Wuhan Polytechnic University in 1996. Her research interests include organic synthesis and tribological material design.
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Chen, H., Gao, X. Relationship between contact size and static friction: An approach for rigid crystalline surfaces. Friction 9, 502–512 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-019-0352-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-019-0352-9