Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations cowski on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

friction independant of contact area?

Status
Not open for further replies.

chriswh84

Electrical
Nov 6, 2006
1
Is it correct to say that fiction force is independant of contact area due to the roughness of apparetly smooth surfaces on microscopic scale. Therefroe the apparent contct area is larger than the real contact area.
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

Friction is too complex to make generalities.
There are different measures of surface roughness. Some irregularities lock together, others reduce the interaction. Solids have different elastic constants, slippage may wear off irregularities, interatomic bonding may occur at contact points, friction is affected by surface films -- oxides, adsorbed moisture (graphite is a poor lubricant in high vacuum where it loses its moisture content), etc., etc.
Are your solid surfaces more like step function, rolling hills, sawtooth, etc. and are both the same?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor