Publications related to Tribology

A story of two transitions: From adhesive to abrasive wear and from ductile to brittle regime

Jean-François Molinari, Sacha Zenon Wattel

Atomistic simulations performed with a family of model potential with tunable hardness have proven to be a great tool for advancing the understanding of wear processes at the asperity level. They have been instrumental in finding a critical length scale, w ...

2024

Roughness Evolution Induced by Third-Body Wear

Jean-François Molinari, Tobias Brink, Antonio Joaquin Garcia Suarez

Surface roughness is a key factor when it comes to friction and wear, as well as to other physical properties. These phenomena are controlled by mechanisms acting at small scales, in which the topography of apparently flat surfaces is revealed. Roughness i ...

2024

Fault roughness controls injection-induced seismicity

Simon Guérin-Marthe, Lei Wang

Surface roughness ubiquitously prevails in natural faults across various length scales. Despite extensive studies highlighting the important role of fault geometry in the dynamics of tectonic earthquakes, whether and how fault roughness affects fluid-induc ...

National Academy of Sciences2024

Modeling friction and wear using an adaptive discrete-continuum coupling

Manon Eugénie Voisin--Leprince

When two objects slide against each other, wear and friction occur at their interface. The accumulation of wear forms what is commonly referred to as a ``third-body''. Understanding third-body evolution has significant applications in industry, where contr ...

EPFL2024

Water weakening and the compressive brittle strength of carbonates: Influence of fracture toughness and static friction

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, Corentin Jean-Marie Rémi Noël, Barnaby Padraig Fryer

Water is ubiquitous within the pore space of rocks and has been shown to affect their physical and mechanical behaviour. Indeed, water can act on the rock strength via mechanical (i.e., reducing the effective stresses) or chemical effects (e.g., mineral di ...

2024

Effect of Mo addition on the mechanical and tribological properties of magnetron sputtered TiN films

Sami Rtimi

Ternary-based titanium nitride (TiN) thin films have drawn attention toward rational applications due to their wear resistance, high hardness, and corrosion resistance. The influence of Mo content on the structural, tribo-logical, and mechanical properties ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2023

Role of Minimum Adhesive Wear Particle Size in Third-Body Layer Properties

Jean-François Molinari, Son-Jonathan Pham-Ba

We employ a novel discrete element method (DEM) force formulation to simulate adhesive wear and assess the effects of material and loading parameters on the properties of the third-body layer (TBL) formed during sliding motion. The study emphasizes the rol ...

2023

Damping of flexure blades based on bi-material additive manufacturing

Simon Nessim Henein, Florent Cosandier, Loïc Benoît Tissot-Daguette, Elias Sebastian Klauser, Florent Alexandre Boudoire, Nikola Kalentics, Nicolas Blondiaux, Lisa Salamin

Flexure-based mechanisms have become state-of-the-art solutions for the design of high-precision mechanisms, free from friction wear, backlash, and lubrication. These properties which are necessary for applications in ultraclean or harsh environments, neve ...

2023

Modeling the origins of adhesive wear across scales

Son-Jonathan Pham-Ba

Friction and wear occur at every interface between solid materials. In the design of mechanical devices, it is desirable to be able to quantify and control the amount of friction and wear, as well as predict their evolution with time. ``Tribology'' is the ...

EPFL2022

Understanding the mechanisms of adhesive wear for heterogeneous materials through atomistic simulations

Jean-François Molinari, Antonio Joaquin Garcia Suarez, Sacha Zenon Wattel

When two rough surfaces slide against each other, two main behaviors can be observed at the asperity level: A ductile behavior where the asperities tend to smooth out or a brittle behavior where the asperities detach and form debris. Recently, a critical l ...

2022

Effect of wear particles and roughness on nanoscale friction

Jean-François Molinari, Enrico Milanese, Tobias Brink

Frictional contacts lead to the formation of a surface layer called the third body, consisting of wear particles and structures resulting from their agglomerates. Its behavior and properties at the nanoscale control the macroscopic tribological performance ...

2022

Adhesive wear with a coarse-grained discrete element model

Jean-François Molinari, Son-Jonathan Pham-Ba

The use of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations has led to promising results to unravel the atomistic origins of adhesive wear, and in particular for the onset of wear at nanoscale surface asperities. However, MD simulations come with a high computational c ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2022

Breakdown of Reye’s theory in nanoscale wear

Jean-François Molinari, Antonio Joaquin Garcia Suarez, Tobias Brink

Building on an analogy to ductile fracture mechanics, we quantify the size of debris particles created during adhesive wear. Earlier work suggested a linear relation between tangential work and wear debris volume, assuming that the debris size is proportio ...

2023

Exploring the inner workings of the clove hitch knot

Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Paul Johanns, Tomohiko Sano, Paul Grandgeorge, Changyeob Baek

We perform a combined experimental and computational investigation of the clove hitch knot. We develop a physical model for the clove hitch by tying an elastic rod onto a rigid cylinder. In the experiments, we characterize the mechanical performance, geome ...

ELSEVIER2022

Numerical and experimental investigation of spiral-grooved gas journal bearings

Elia Iseli

Small-scale turbomachinery is increasingly used in carbon-free energy conversion systems, such as commercial or domestic scale heat pumps, fuels cells for transportation and waste heat recovery. The usage of aerodynamic bearings allows the design of compac ...

EPFL2022

Determination of Parameters Characteristic of Dynamic Weakening Mechanisms During Seismic Faulting in Cohesive Rocks

Marie Estelle Solange Violay, François Xavier Thibault Passelègue, Chiara Cornelio

While sliding at seismic slip-rates of ∼1 m/s, natural faults undergo an abrupt decrease of shear stress called dynamic weakening. Asperity-scale processes related to flash heating and weakening and, meso-scale (mm-cm) processes involving shear across the ...

AGU2022

A parameter-free mechanistic model of the adhesive wear process of rough surfaces in sliding contact

Jean-François Molinari, Tobias Brink, Lucas Henri Galilée Frérot

In order to develop predictive wear laws, relevant material parameters and their influence on the wear rate need to be identified. Despite decades of research, there is no agreement on the mathematical form of wear equations and even the simplest models, s ...

2021

Modeling Current Transients in a Reciprocal Motion Tribocorrosion Experiment

Stefano Mischler, Anna Neus Igual Muñoz, Shoufan Cao

Tribocorrosion of passivating metals is a dynamic phenomenon causing degradation of materials by a combination of mechanical wear and electrochemical dissolution. The mechanical action typically produces a local removal of particles, metal as well as oxide ...

ELECTROCHEMICAL SOC INC2021

A Simple Mechanistic Model for Friction of Rough Partially Lubricated Surfaces

Jean-François Molinari, Tobias Brink, Gianluca Costagliola, Julie Richard

We report experimental measurements of friction between an aluminum alloy sliding over steel with various lubricant densities. Using the topography scans of the surfaces as input, we calculate the real contact area using the boundary element method and the ...

2021

Adhesive wear regimes on rough surfaces and interaction of micro-contacts

Jean-François Molinari, Son-Jonathan Pham-Ba

We develop an analytical model of adhesive wear between two unlubricated rough surfaces, forming micro-contacts under normal load. The model is based on an energy balance and a crack initiation criteria. We apply the model to the problem of self-affine rou ...

2021