Jay Fineberg
The Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Date
04 March 2015
Host
Christof Aegerter
Title
How Things Slide: Friction is Fracture
Abstract
The dynamics of how two rough frictional interfaces start to slide is a fundamental question in fields ranging from material science to geophysics. Since Da Vinci the onset of frictional motion has been characterized by a static friction coefficient. For hundreds of years, this has been considered to be a material constant. We describe new experiments that examine how rapid crack-like processes actually cause the onset of motion that we know as frictional sliding. These experiments suggest a new paradigm for friction; friction is actually a fracture process or, in other words, the question of “How things slide” is basically the same as “How things break”!