Effect of Micro-convex Texture and Wettability on Friction Characteristics of Rubber Sliding Contact Interface

Rubber material has been widely used in daily life and industrial development, but the existing research mainly focuses on viscoelastic properties,surface modification and other aspects of rubber material,while there are few studies on the influence of the microstructure of solid surface on the friction properties of rubber sliding contact interface.Based on the rubber sliding contact interface, the reciprocating friction experiments are carried out on a reciprocating friction testing machine, which is composed of a steel ball and a PDMS rubber block. The sliding friction characteristics of rubber under different surface morphologies are investigated by changing the texture types and morphology parameters, and the effect of the wettability of convex texture is also considered. The experimental results show that adding proper convex texture on the rubber surface can reduce the sliding friction factor under lubrication condition. The shape, area share, height and diameter of convex texture have influence on the sliding friction factor and contact angle of rubber surface, especially the friction factor and contact angle of the long groove texture are directional. Combined with the friction factor and wettability, it is found that the wettability of rubber surface becomes better and the friction factor decreases with the increase of convex texture diameter in a certain range. Meanwhile, the wettability of rubber surface becomes poor and the friction factor decreases with the increase of the area share and height of convex texture. The influence of the micro-convex texture of rubber surface and its wettability change on the friction characteristics of rubber sliding contact interface are studied, this may lay a theoretical foundation for the tribological design of rubber material surface.