Issues in validation of pre-sliding friction models for ultra-high precision positioning

Friction is one of the main disturbances in nanometric positioning. Recently, it was shown that ultra-high precision positioning typically happens in the pre-sliding motion regime where friction is characterized by an elasto-plastic nonlinear hysteretic behavior with a marked stochastic variability. With the aim of providing the tools for the development of robust control typologies for ultra-high precision mechatronics devices, different pre-sliding friction models are thus considered in this work. The most relevant ones are hence experimentally validated, as well as compared in terms of the complexity of identifying their characteristic parameters and of simulating the factual dynamic response. It is hence shown that the generalized Maxwell-slip model can account for all the important pre-sliding frictional effects in nanometric positioning applications. A thorough sensitivity analysis of the parameters of the generalized Maxwell-slip model model is therefore performed allowing to establish that three Maxwell-slip blocks are the minimum needed to approximate the behavior of the real precision positioning systems, six blocks allow representing excellently the real behavior, while the slower dynamics, which induces a difficult real-time implementation, with a very limited gain in terms of model accuracy, does not justify the usage of a larger number of elements.