Viscoelastic Adhesion and Friction in Sliding Contacts

We present our recent study on adhesive contacts of viscoelastic materials sliding against rigid substrates. Ultimately, the theory addresses the combined effect of viscoelasticity and adhesion in sliding contacts, with specific focus on the sliding frictional behavior. Compared to the adhesiveless case, we show that a significant enhancement of hysteretic friction occurs in the presence of adhesion, in agreement with long-standing experimental evidence. The presented formulation allows to investigate the effect of sliding velocities ranging from extremely slow to very high, thus taking into for local viscoelasticity, occurring at the edges of the contacts (crack tips), and bulk viscoelasticity, occurring in the bulk deformable material.