Department of Mechanics: Seminar: Abstract de Geus 2018

Does inertia induce stick-slip friction?

Tom de Geus, Physics of complex systems laboratory, Physics Section, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Department meeting room (B-366), Faculty of Civil Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague

Wednesday, 30 January 2019, 11:00-12:00

We study the nucleation of slip between two sliding solids, whereby we focus on a mesoscopic level where the disorder, introduced by the surface roughness, matters. It is at this scale that we can study how different contacts interact through the bulk's elasticity. A result of this interaction is that the detachment of one asperity can trigger that of other contacts in its vicinity. An interesting question is if such collective effects organise into depinning-like avalanches. Vice versa this system allows the clarification of the debated role of inertia on an avalanche-like response [1-3]. We argue that, due to the presence of rare weak sites, the response is smooth in the thermodynamic limit. At the same time, we find this mechanism not to be efficient, leading to a stick-slip response in finite systems.

References

[1] D.S. Fisher, K. Dahmen, S. Ramanathan, Y. Ben-Zion (1997). Statistics of Earthquakes in Simple Models of Heterogeneous Faults. Physical Review Letters, 78(25), 4885–4888.
[2] J.M. Schwarz, D.S. Fisher (2003). Depinning with dynamic stress overshoots: A hybrid of critical and pseudohysteretic behavior. Physical Review E, 67(2), 021603.
[3] K. Karimi, E.E. Ferrero, J.-L. Barrat (2017). Inertia and universality of avalanche statistics: The case of slowly deformed amorphous solids. Physical Review E, 95(1), 013003.