Non-Amontons-Coulomb local friction law of randomly rough contact interfaces with rubber

Abstract

We report on measurements of the local friction law at a multi-contact interface formed between a smooth rubber and statistically rough glass lenses, under steady state friction. Using contact imaging, surface displacements are measured, and inverted to extract both distributions of frictional shear stress and contact pressure with a spatial resolution of about 10~$\mu$m. For a glass surface whose topography is self-affine with a Gaussian height asperity distribution, the local frictional shear stress is found to vary strongly sub-linearly with the local contact pressure over the whole investigated pressure range. Such sub-linear behavior is also evidenced for a surface with a non Gaussian height asperity distribution, demonstrating that, for such multi-contact interfaces, Amontons-Coulomb's friction law does not prevail at the local scale.