Measurement of Friction Noise Versus Contact Area of Rough Surfaces Weakly Loaded

This study presents an experiment to measure the dependence of friction noise versus the nominal contact area. The friction-induced vibration is generated by the sliding of two rough surfaces. The normal load is low leading to a weak contact. The normal load and the sliding velocity are maintained constant. The nominal contact area ranges over two orders of magnitude. It is found that two regimes exist. On the one hand, the vibration energy is proportional to the contact area. But on the second hand, the vibration energy is constant, i.e., does not depend on the contact area.