On the dependency of rubber friction on the normal force or load: theory and experiment

TL;DR

This paper investigates how rubber friction depends on normal force, emphasizing the role of frictional heating, and presents a theoretical model validated by experimental data showing temperature effects on contact and friction.

Contribution

The paper introduces a theory linking rubber friction to temperature rise due to frictional heating, supported by numerical results matching experimental observations.

Findings

Frictional heating significantly influences rubber friction and contact area.

Temperature distribution depends on sliding history, affecting friction coefficient.

Numerical model aligns well with experimental temperature measurements.

Abstract

In rubber friction studies it is often observed that the kinetic friction coefficient {\mu} depends on the nominal contact pressure p. We discuss several possible origins of the pressure dependency of {\mu}: (a) saturation of the contact area (and friction force) due to high nominal squeezing pressure, (b) non-linear viscoelasticity, (c) non-randomness in the surface topography, in particular the influence of the skewness of the surface roughness profile, (d) adhesion, and (e) frictional heating. We show that in most cases the non-linearity in the {\mu}(p) relation is mainly due to process (e) (frictional heating), which softens the rubber, increases the area of contact, and (in most cases) reduces the viscoelastic contribution to the friction. In fact, since the temperature distribution in the rubber at time t depends on on the sliding history (i.e., on the earlier time t0 < t), the friction coefficient at time t will also depend on the sliding history, i.e. it is, strictly speaking, a time integral operator. The energy dissipation in the contact regions between solids in sliding contact can result in high local temperatures which may strongly affect the area of real contact and the friction force (and the wear-rate). This is the case for rubber sliding on road surfaces at speeds above 1 mm/s. In Ref. [14] we have derived equations which describe the frictional heating for solids with arbitrary thermal properties. In this paper the theory is applied to rubber friction on road surfaces. Numerical results are presented and compared to experimental data. We observe good agreement between the calculated and measured temperature increase.