Modeling of dry sliding friction dynamics: from heuristic models to physically motivated models and back

After giving an overview of the different approaches found in the literature to model dry friction force dynamics, this paper presents a generic friction model based on physical mechanisms involved in the interaction of a large population of surface asperities and discusses the resulting macroscopic friction behavior. The latter includes the hysteretic characteristic of friction in the presliding regime, the velocity weakening and strengthening in gross-sliding regime, the frictional lag and the stick-slip behavior. Out of the generic model, which is shown to be a good, but rather computationally intensive, simulation tool, a simpler heuristic model, which we call the generalized Maxwell-slip friction, is deduced. This model is appropriate for quick simulation and control purposes being easy to implement and to identify. Both of the generic and heuristic model structures are compared, through simulations, with each other and with experimental data.