
NEWTON, Ask A Scientist!
Name: Sharon
Status: Other
Age: 30s
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A

How do you determine the coefficient of friction between two materials? When you add a fluid for lubrication between the two materials, how do you determine the amount of fluid to add?

Well, you can measure it. You press down on one material with another with a given normal force and then measure the force required to (a) start motion parallel to the interface, to measure static friction, and (b) continue motion parallel to the interface, to measure dynamic friction.

If your surfaces are of a relatively standard shape and material, then it is likely the measurement has been done before, and you can look the numbers up. What exactly are you after? Detailed engineering specifications? The generic physics of friction? Your first question is not so easy to pin down. . .

Ideally I believe you want as thin a film as possible. Think of it this way: your purpose is to allow motion of one surface without wasting energy in applying force to immediately adjacent surface. Solid surfaces stick to one another because microscopic roughness ``catches,'' like two pieces of sandpaper facing each other. So you put a liquid in between, which keeps the surfaces farther apart than the microscopic protrusions protrude, and which deforms when the protrusions move through it. If your layer is thick enough that the protrusions do not catch, then your energy loss is through the stirring up of the fluid, which heats it (pointlessly). This heating will be more if the fluid is thick (viscous) than if it is thin. But your fluid will stay in a rough, moving, crack under pressure better if it is viscous. So you can only use a low-viscosity lubricant if you have a thin crack. But if you have a thin crack, you need to have better machining of your solid surfaces, so the protrusions are smaller and a thinner layer keeps them apart.

Hence I think the thickness of a lubrication film is among other things a compromise between the expense of high-quality machining and the design goal of low friction. The study of the optimal solutions comprises the field of tribology, a large and hairy subject.

If you mean: how do you determine microscopically the coefficient of friction, the answer is no one can do that at present. Check back in twenty years.

Caveat emptor: this is not my field!


Click here to return to the Engineering Archives



Educational Programs
Building 360
9700 S. Cass Ave.
Argonne, Illinois
60439-4845, USA
Update: June 2012
Weclome To Newton

Argonne National Laboratory