A discussion on present theories of rubber friction, with particular reference to different possible choices of arbitrary roughness cutoff parameters

Since the early study by Grosch in 1963 it has been known that rubber friction shows generally two maxima with respect to speed - the first one attributed to adhesion, and another at higher velocities attributed to viscoelastic losses. The theory of Klüppel and Heinrich and that of Persson suggests that viscoelastic losses crucially depend on the “multiscale” aspect of roughness and in particular on truncation at fine scales. In this study, we comment a little on both theories, giving some examples using Persson’s theory on the uncertainties involved in the truncation of the roughness spectrum. It is shown how different choices of Persson’s model parameters, for example the high-frequency cutoff, equally fit experimental data on viscoelastic friction, hence it is unclear how to rigorously separate the adhesive and the viscoelastic contributions from experiments.Deutsche Forschungsgemenschaft (DFG)Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) under theDepartments of ExcellencePON Ricerca e Innovazione 2014/202