Stress drop and contact stiffness measured from stick-slip experiments on PMMA-PMMA friction

Abstract

We present results from an extensive stick-slip study on PMMA-PMMA dry friction, where we studied the influence of a wide range of normal stresses, loading velocities and roughnesses of the sliding surfaces. In this paper we focus (a) on the analysis of a residual coefficient of friction, i.e., shear stress measured at the end of the slip phase divided by the corresponding normal stress, and (b) on the contact stiffness measured by plotting the relative displacement between sample against the shear stress during the stick phase. It is shown that the residual coefficient of friction (i) decreases as normal stress increases, (ii) shows a slight increase when the roughness of the sliding surfaces increases and (iii) does not vary according to the loading velocity. The contact stiffness proved independent of loading conditions and of the roughness of the sliding surfaces. These results are interpreted in terms of asperity interlocking.