Stick–slip boundary friction mode as a second-order phase transition with an inhomogeneous distribution of elastic stress in the contact area

• Iakov A. Lyashenko,
• Vadym N. Borysiuk and
• Valentin L. Popov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1889–1896, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.189

• the stick–slip mode of boundary friction. An analytical description and numerical simulation with radial distributions of the order parameter, stress and strain were performed to investigate the spatial inhomogeneity. It is shown that in the case when the driving device is connected to the upper part

• of the friction block through an elastic spring, the frequency of the melting/solidification phase transitions increases with time. Keywords: boundary friction; dimensionality reduction; numerical simulation; shear stress and strain; stick–slip motion; tribology; Introduction The boundary friction

• between the asperities. A specific case of boundary friction is friction between two atomically flat surfaces separated by a layer of lubricant with thickness of a few atomic diameters [1][2], or even monolayers [3]. Such type of friction mode plays an important role in applied mechanics as it often

Physical principles of fluid-mediated insect attachment - Shouldn’t insects slip?

• Jan-Henning Dirks

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 1160–1166, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.127

• interference reflection microscopy results indicate that boundary friction might be responsible for the friction [49][68]. However, although first results indicate that the mediating fluid layer in insect pads might be thinner than previous estimates [69], so far there is no experimental evidence for the