Contact Behaviour of a Sliding Rubber Element

Friction occurs in the contact between tyre and road. The friction of rubber material on dry surfaces is dominated by hysteresis and adhesion effects. Hysterisis friction is characterised by the energy dissipation within the visco-elastic material, which is caused by its deformation while passing the surface roughness. Hysteresis effects are modelled by an extended linear visco-elastic material with several Maxwell elements. The development of a model in the time domain allows to consider nonlinear effects. Additionally temperature effects are taken into account based on the WLF-transformation. Adhesion forces originate from molecular bindings between the contact partners. This effect is simulated by applying a modified model of Achenbach on real surfaces. The temperature distribution within the friction contact region is investigated experimentally as well. Furthermore global stick-slip vibrations of a rubber block element are investigated using a global contact model. Numerical results are compared with experiments performed on a tribometer test rig.