Self-sustained lift and low friction via soft lubrication
Abstract
Relative motion between soft wet solids arises in a number of applications in natural and artificial settings, and invariably couples elastic deformation and fluid flow. We explore this in a minimal setting by considering a fluid-immersed negatively-buoyant cylinder moving along a soft inclined wall. Our experiments show that there is an emergent robust steady-state sliding regime of the cylinder with an effective friction that is significantly reduced relative to that of rigid fluid-lubricated contacts. A simple scaling approach that couples the cylinder-induced flow to substrate deformation allows us to explain the emergence of an elastohydrodynamic lift that underlies the self-sustained lubricated motion of the cylinder, consistent with recent theoretical predictions. Our results suggest an explanation for a range of effects such as reduced wear in animal joints and long-runout landslides, and can be couched as a design principle for low-friction interfaces.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1601.03063,
title = {Self-sustained lift and low friction via soft lubrication},
author = {Baudouin Saintyves and Théo Jules and Thomas Salez and L. Mahadevan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1601.03063},
year = {2016}
}