FE simulation of the hysteretic friction considering the surface topography

Present study investigates the hysteretic rubber friction in case of ideally rigid, rough surfaces sliding on a rubber plate. To characterize the topography of the rough surface stylus and AFM measurements were performed. Two- and three-dimensional models were created in order to predict the hysteretic rubber friction by finite element analysis. The characteristic wavelengths and amplitudes of the engineering surface studied were determined and simple, two-dimensional roughness models with different length scales were constructed. In 3D, NURBS surface was used to model the surface roughness. In order to describe the non-linear and viscoelastic material behaviour of the observed EPDM rubber, two-parameter Mooney-Rivlin material law combined with 40-term generalized Maxwell-model has been used. The effect of sliding speed, temperature and geometric parameters of the roughness model were also investigated.