Thermal Effects versus Viscoelasticity in Ice-Rubber Friction Mechanisms

International audienceThis work presents an experimental analysis of the friction response of an ice-rubber inter- face over five decades of sliding velocity and temperature down to -20°C, combining in-situ contact visualisation and simultaneous force measurements. Viscoelastic properties of the rubber were varied in terms of glassy temperature transition and elastic modulus. Based on the in-situ contact area measurements, the adhesive and viscoelastic contributions were identified. Even though a bell-shape friction-velocity curve was observed, the classical WLF transform did not allow a description of the friction behaviour. A simple analytical model accounting for the thermal dissipation induced by friction was thus proposed and a dimen- sionless master curve was obtained with the sliding velocity, regardless of the temperature and the material properties. From this master curve, a predictive friction model was pro- posed, in which both friction contributions, adhesion-viscoelasticity and thermal dissipation, were multiplicative rather than simply additive