Tribological issues in MEMS devices
For the convenience of our readers who are not familiar with MEMS technology, we have first given a brief introduction to MEMS. Defining Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) In a simpler way, MEMS can be defined as the technology of microscopic...
How can shear loading rate affect the soft adhesive contact area?
Today, my youngest daughter dropped her spoon again on the floor. She didn’t do it on purpose. But I still had to get it back again, give it a quick wash again and give it back again... What’s wrong? It’s...
An Engineered Salvinia-like Slippery Surface
The surface properties of materials are often critical because they dictate how they react with their external environment. An important property currently under intense investigation is how surfaces interact with liquids like water. In a wide range of industrial applications,...
Measuring adhesion and friction of polymer nanofibers
Nanofibers are tiny fibers with diameters measured in the nanometer range. They can be generated by a variety of methods, from various different polymers, therefore they can exhibit different physical properties with different application potentials. The diameters of nanofibers will...
Tribology on the Small Scale: A Modern Textbook on Friction, Lubrication, and Wear
In recent decades, tribology field has seen a great interest in friction and wear processes occurring at the micro- and nanoscale. This interest has led to the development of a new branch of tribology focusing on the small scale phenomena – nanotribology. With the...
From the Climate Change to the Atomic Scale Friction: Contact Mechanics Workshop Summary
This is a summary of International Workshop: Contact Mechanics and Friction - Foundations and Applications that was organized by Professor Popov and his group at TU Berlin on 13-17 October 2019. The workshop held this year was a special one...
Physics of Contact and Adhesion with application to biological systems – ICTP Colloquium
A talk by Professor Bo Persson on contact mechanics and adhesion in biological systems. Abstract: One of the weakest forces in nature is the van der Waals interaction which acts between all atoms and solids. Still on a macroscopic level...
Should the contact area really increase due to sliding, and why this is never observed?
Abstract A paper by Menga, Carbone & Dini (MCD) recently published in prestigeous journal, suggests that in the contact with adhesion, the effect of tangential forces, and in particular of shear stresses assumed constant at the interface and equal to...
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Friction in Only One Direction
Nature has amazed us since the beginning of time. It provides the foundation for all of our best ideas. The animal world provides the inspiration behind one of the new inventions in the world of tribology - namely microstructured material...
Sticky or Not Sticky?
Numerical analysis of adhesion of rough surfaces shows that there exist one unique parameter determining whether the surface is sticky or not. It is well known that neutral bodies attract each other by van der Waals forces. However, adhesive forces...
