Lubricated friction surface force apparatus experiments

In spite of the strong economic importance of friction and wear and the resulting scientific effort, our understanding of the fundamental processes is still rudimentary. This results from the complexity of these topics. In addition, this complexity demands a multi-disciplinary approach to tribology. In recent years the development of new experimental methods such as the surface forces apparatus, the atomic force microscope, and the quartz microbalance made it possible to study friction and lubrication at the molecular scale. However, this new wealth of information does not alter the fact, that there are no fundamental equations to describe wear or calculate friction coefficients. Engineers still have to rely largely on their empirical knowledge and their extensive experience. 

Example 11.4. McGuiggan et al. [492] measured the friction on mica surfaces coated with thin films of either perfluoropolyether (PFPE) or polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) using three different methods The surface forces apparatus (radius of curvature of the contacting bodies R 1 cm) friction force microscopy with a sharp AFM tip (R 20 nm) and friction force microscopy with a colloidal probe (R 15 nm). In the surface force apparatus, friction coefficients of the two materials differed by a factor of 100 whereas for the AFM silicon nitride tip, the friction coefficient for both materials was the same. When the colloidal probe technique was used, the friction coefficients differed by a factor of 4. This can be explained by the fact that, in friction force experiments, the contact pressures are much higher. This leads to a complete penetration of the AFM tip through the lubrication layer, rendering the lubricants ineffective. In the case of the colloidal probe the contact pressure is reduced and the lubrication layer cannot be displaced completely. 

The three major new atomic-scale experimental methods developed in the last decade are the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) [2 4], atomic and friction force microscopes (AFM/FFM) [5,6], and the surface force apparatus (SEA) [7,7a,8]. These new tools reveal complementary information about tribology at the nanometer scale. The QCM measures dissipation as an adsorbed him of submonolayer to several monolayer thickness slides over a substrate. AFM and FFM explore the interactions between a surface and a tip whose radius of curvature is 10 100 nm [9]. The number of atoms in the contact ranges from a few to a few thousand. Larger radii of curvature and contacts have been examined by gluing spheres to an AFM cantilever [10,11]. SEA experiments measure shear forces in even larger-diameter ( 10 pm) contacts, but with angstrom-scale control of the thickness of lubricating hlms. 

One of the problems faced with polymer systems is that of equilibrium. Not only may adsorbed polymers desorb during compression, but the polymer may not be able to achieve its equilibrium configuration for a given separation over the time-scale of the experiment. Several groups have thus built modified surface force apparatuses to perform viscoelastic measurements on confined films, not only to determine relaxation rates for grafted polymers, but also to determine the effect of confinement on the physical properties of the films and to study friction and lubrication (see Section 2.5 above). Storage and loss moduli can be extracted from the response to oscillations in the frequency range of approximately 10 to 10 Hz. Montfort and co-workers, for example, have used normal oscillations to study the viscoelasticity of polybutadiene films on metal surfaces in hydrocarbons (234, 235). At such sufficiently small separations that the polymers could interact with one another, the... 

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