Effect of fractal disorder on static friction in the Tomlinson model

Abstract

We propose a modified version of the Tomlinson model for static friction between two chains of beads. We introduce disorder in terms of vacancies in the chain, and distribute the remaining beads in a scale invariant way. For this we utilize a generalized random Cantor set. We relate the static friction force, to the overlap distribution of the chains, and discuss how the distribution of the static friction force depends on the distribution of the remaining beads. For the random Cantor set we find a scaled distribution which is independent on the generation of the set.