An experimental investigation of the effect of subdivision of contact area on surface temperatures generated by friction

An experimental investigation of surface temperatures generated by dry sliding friction was carried out with the use of an infrared radiometric microscope system that was developed at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of subdividing the apparent contact area on the surface temperature generated by friction.

Subdividing the geometric contact resulted in lowering the surface temperatures and followed the trend predicted by theory quite well. The study concluded that the surface temperatures predicted by the Archard and Jaeger theories correctly described the influence of nominal load and sliding velocity on the experimental surface temperatures.

A detailing description of the experimental apparatus, the radiation analysis used to convert the radiance output of the microscope to temperature, and the experimental procedure is included.