Smoothed particle hydrodynamics study of friction of the coarse-grained $\alpha$-Al2O3/$\alpha$-Al2O3 and $\alpha$-Fe2O3/$\alpha$-Fe2O3 contacts in behavior of the spring interfacial potential

TL;DR

This study employs smoothed particle hydrodynamics to analyze the friction behavior of coarse-grained $ ext{Al}_2 ext{O}_3$ and $ ext{Fe}_2 ext{O}_3$ contacts, revealing that friction properties are largely unaffected by coarse-graining at micron scales.

Contribution

It introduces a method to model interfacial interactions using spring potentials derived from atomic surface potentials, linking atomic-scale data to micron-scale friction simulations.

Findings

Friction properties are nearly independent of coarse-graining at micron scale.

Friction coefficient decreases with increasing normal interfacial force.

Normal force stability influences the friction behavior.

Abstract

The paper uses the spring potential to present interaction between the coarse-grained interfacial particles of the $\alpha$-Al2O3/$\alpha$-Al2O3 and $\alpha$-Fe2O3/$\alpha$-Fe2O3 contacts in the sliding friction study of these micron-scale oxides by smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations. The spring constants of the potential for the particle systems are converted from those of the atomic oxide systems that are yielded by the second order polynomial fits of the probed surface potentials in molecular dynamics simulations, and are dependent on the particle coarse-graining. It is founded that at micron-scale the friction properties of the oxides are almost independent of the coarse-graining and are the same in the different sliding directions. Even the hardness contacts friction coefficient shows a decrease with increasing intensity of normal component of the interfacial interaction, originating from stability of friction force and growth of normal force. This result is as an implementation for the previous observations of sliding friction of various materials that showed that a drop of friction coefficient with increasing externally applied normal load has originated from deformation of interfaces or occurrence of debris at contact, indicating an unsteady contact.