Hysteretic friction of rubber in tribological tests

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to summarize different investigations of FE modelling of rubber hysteretic friction which was produced in the last 4 years in the KRISTAL project (Knowledgebased Radical Innovation Surfacing for Tribology and Advanced Lubrication, EU Project Reference). First, the characterization of the viscoelastic material properties of an EPDM 75 rubber by 40 term generalized Maxwell model fitted to the loss factor is presented. After it, the validation of the material model using it in FE model´s for simulating different tribological tests are produced. The DMTA test, after micro hardness tests are modelled. Then, a ball on plate tribological test was simulated by FEA and to check the reliability of the material model the test and FE results were compared. Finally, rubber sliding on a rough surface was modelled and the hysteretic friction was determined by 2D and 3D FE models.