Slow wave propagation in soft adhesive interfaces

Alternatives to Friction Coefficient: Fine Touch Perception Relies on Frictional Instabilities

Fine touch perception is often correlated to material properties and friction coefficients, but the inherent variability of human motion has led to low correlations and contradictory findings. Instead, we hypothesized that humans use frictional instabilities to discriminate between objects. We constructed a set of coated surfaces with physical differences which were imperceptible by touch but created different types of instabilities based on how quickly a finger is slid and how hard a human finger is pressed during sliding. We found that participant accuracy in tactile discrimination most strongly correlated with formations of steady sliding, and response times negatively correlated with stiction spikes. Conversely, traditional metrics like surface roughness or average friction coefficient did not predict tactile discriminability. Identifying the central role of frictional instabilities as an alternative to using friction coefficients should accelerate the design of tactile interfaces for psychophysics and haptics.

Fifty years of Schallamach waves: from rubber friction to nanoscale fracture

The question of how soft polymers slide against hard surfaces is of significant scientific interest, given its practical implications. Specifically, such systems commonly show interesting stick-slip dynamics, wherein the interface moves intermittently despite uniform remote loading. The year 2021 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of a seminal paper by Adolf Schallamach (Wear, 1971), which first revealed an intimate link between stick-slip and moving detachment waves, now called Schallamach waves. We place Schallamach's results in a broader context and review subsequent investigations of stick-slip, before discussing recent observations of solitary Schallamach waves. This variant is not observable in standard contacts so that a special cylindrical contact must be used to quantify its properties. The latter configuration also reveals the occurrence of a dual wave-the so-called separation pulse-that propagates in a direction opposite to Schallamach waves. We show how the dual wave and other, more general, Schallamach-type waves can be described using continuum theory and provide pointers for future research. In the process, fundamental analogues of Schallamach-type waves emerge in nanoscale mechanics and interface fracture. The result is an ongoing application of lessons learnt from Schallamach-type waves to better understand these latter phenomena. This article is part of the theme issue 'Nanocracks in nature and industry'.

Dependence of adhesive friction on surface roughness and elastic modulus

Friction is one of the leading causes of energy loss in moving parts, and understanding how roughness affects friction is of utmost importance. From creating surfaces with high friction to prevent slip and movement, to creating surfaces with low friction to minimize energy loss, roughness plays a key role. By measuring shear stresses of crosslinked elastomers on three rough surfaces of similar surface chemistry across nearly six decades of sliding velocity, we demonstrate the dominant role of adhesive frictional dissipation. Furthermore, while it was previously known that roughness-induced oscillations affected the viscoelastic dissipation, we show that these oscillations also control the molecular detachment process and the resulting adhesive dissipation. This contrasts with typical models of friction, where only the amount of contact area and the strength of interfacial bonding govern the adhesive dissipation. Finally, we show that all the data can be collapsed onto a universal curve when the shear stress is scaled by the square root of elastic modulus and the velocity is scaled by a critical velocity at which the system exhibits macroscopic buckling instabilities. Taken together, these results suggest a design principle broadly applicable to frictional systems ranging from tires to soft robotics.

Propagating Schallamach-type waves resemble interface cracks

Intermittent motion, called stick-slip, is a friction instability that commonly occurs during relative sliding of two elastic solids. In adhesive polymer contacts, where elasticity and interface adhesion are strongly coupled, stick-slip arises due to the propagation of slow detachment waves at the interface. Here we analyze two distinct detachment waves moving parallel (Schallamach wave) and antiparallel (separation wave) to applied remote sliding. Both waves cause slip in the same direction, travel at speeds much lesser than any elastic wave speed, and are therefore describable using the same perturbative elastodynamic framework with identical boundary conditions. A numerical scheme is used to obtain interface stresses and velocities for arbitrary Poisson ratio, along with closed-form solutions for incompressible solids. Our calculations reveal a close correspondence between moving detachment waves and bimaterial interface cracks, including the nature of the singularity and the functional forms of the stresses. Based on this correspondence, and coupled with a fracture analogy for dynamic friction, we develop a phase diagram showing domains of possible occurrence of stick-slip via detachment waves vis-á-vis steady interface sliding. Our results have interesting implications for sliding and stick-slip phenomena at soft interfaces.