The effect of amplitude of vibration on the coefficient of friction for different materials

This work examines how friction coefficients are affected by amplitude of normal vibration at different frequencies. Variation of friction coefficient with the amplitude of normal vibration is investigated experimentally when mild steel pin slides on different types of material such as glass fiber reinforced plastic, cloth reinforced ebonite, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), rubber and mild steel. For this, a pin-on-disc apparatus having facility of vibrating the test samples at different amplitudes and frequencies of vibration was designed and fabricated. During the experiments, the effects of sliding velocity, roughness, normal load and duration of rubbing were also investigated. Studies have shown that the friction coefficient decreases with the increase of amplitude of vibration within the observed range. The observed ranges of amplitude of vibration were 10–200 μm. In this study, it is also observed that the rate of reduction of friction coefficient has a particular relationship on the amplitude and frequency of vibration. The experimental results are compared with those available in the literature and simple physical explanations are provided.