English

Interfacial separation between elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces: comparison of experiment with theory

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

We study the average separation between an elastic solid and a hard solid with a nominal flat but randomly rough surface, as a function of the squeezing pressure. We present experimental results for a silicon rubber (PDMS) block with a flat surface squeezed against an asphalt road surface. The theory shows that an effective repulse pressure act between the surfaces of the form p proportional to exp(-u/u0), where u is the average separation between the surfaces and u0 a constant of order the root-mean-square roughness, in good agreement with the experimental results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0810.0950,
  title  = {Interfacial separation between elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces: comparison of experiment with theory},
  author = {B. Lorenz and B. N. J. Persson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0810.0950},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

6 pages, 10 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:27:41.899Z