Friction reduction through biologically inspired scale-like laser surface textures

• Johannes Schneider,
• Vergil Djamiykov and
• Christian Greiner

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2561–2572, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.238

• the potential to yield significant reduction in friction forces and are expected to spark future research in the field of biologically inspired surface morphologies applied to tribological contacts. Keywords: bioinspiration; friction; laser surface texturing; scales; tribology; Introduction Friction

• sliding speeds. The second set of experiments aims at investigating a possible size effect under dry sliding against sapphire for a constant sliding speed by varying the scale size by more than a factor of ten. Results and Discussion Laser surface texturing In order to investigate the tribological

• friction coefficients by about a factor of four. This is in the range of the 80% friction reduction that was previously reported in lubricated steel-on-steel contacts for surfaces textured with round dimples (the most common pattern reported in laser surface texturing) [15][16]. These results signify a