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Stick-slip friction

Understanding how slip at a frictional interface initiates is important for e.g. earthquake prediction and precision engineering. The force needed to start sliding a solid object over a flat surface is classically described by a “static friction coefficient”: a constant established by measurements. It was recently questioned if such constant exists, as it was shown to be poorly reproducible. Over the recent years I have proposed a novel theory for the onset of slip (formerly known as the “static friction coefficient”) that is based on:

• An armouring mechanism that results in few “soft spots” after slip [1].

• A competition between disorder and elasticity that results in spatial correlations in stress [2].

• A phase-transition-like behaviour that results in a critical stress for slip (the “dynamic friction coefficient”) [3].

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Selected publications

[1]

E. El Sergany, M. Wyart, and T.W.J. de Geus. Armouring of a frictional interface by mechanical noise. arXiv preprint: 2301.13802, 2023. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2301.13802.

[2]

T.W.J. de Geus and M. Wyart. Scaling theory for the statistics of slip at frictional interfaces. Phys. Rev. E, 106(6):065001, 2022. arXiv:2204.02795, doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.106.065001.

[3]

T.W.J. de Geus, M. Popović, W. Ji, A. Rosso, and M. Wyart. How collective asperity detachments nucleate slip at frictional interfaces. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 116(48):23977–23983, 2019. arXiv:1904.07635, doi:10.1073/pnas.1906551116.