An Analytical Description of the Frictional Behaviour of a Titanium Alloy.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Research Letters in Materials Science Volume 2007, Article ID 92170, 4 pages doi:10.1155/2007/92170 Research Letter An Analytical Description of the Frictional Behaviour of a Titanium Alloy Nicholas Christakis1 and Achilles Vairis2 1 Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Crete, 71409 Heraklion, Greece 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technological Education Institute of Crete, P.O.Box 1939, 71004 Crete, Greece Correspondence should be addressed to Nicholas Christakis, nchristakis@tem.uoc.gr Received 1 October 2007; Accepted 31 October 2007 Recommended by Kwai S. Chan In recent years, significant effort has been put in the enhancement of our understanding of the physics and mechanics of moving objects under contact. Developed theoretical models can not fully account for the observed frictional behaviour of materials due to the lack of understanding of the interaction processes which occur at the microscopic level. In this paper, an analytical contact model will be described and its application to a titanium alloy will be presented. Conclusions will be drawn on the ability of this model to describe different friction regimes. The inclusion of additional factors which impact on frictional behaviour will be discussed, as well as the derivation of constitutive equations and their utilisation in continuum models. Copyright © 2007 N. Christakis and A. Vairis. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1. INTRODUCTION model has been modified in order to reflect the change in