V N Samoilov | PubMed Health

PubMed2004

The effect of surface roughness on the adhesion of solid surfaces for systems with and without liquid lubricant.

We present molecular dynamics results for the interaction between two solid elastic walls during pull-off for systems with and without octane (C(8)H(18)) lubricant. We used two types of substrate--flat and corrugated--and varied the lubricant coverage from approximately 1/8 to approximately 4 ML (monolayers) of octane. For the flat substrate without lubricant the maximum adhesion was found to be approximately three times larger than for the system with the corrugated substrate. As a function of the octane coverage (for the corrugated substrate) the pull-off force first increases as the coverage increases from 0 to approximately 1 ML, and then decreases as the coverage is increased beyond monolayer coverage. It is shown that at low octane coverage, the octane molecules located in the substrate corrugation wells during squeezing are pulled out of the wells during pull-off, forming a network of nanocapillary bridges around the substrate nanoasperities, thus increasing the adhesion between two surfaces. For greater lubricant coverages a single capillary bridge is formed. The adhesion force saturates for lubricant coverages greater than 3 ML. For the flat substrate, during pull-off we observe discontinuous, thermally activated changes in the number n of lubricant layers (n-1-->n layering transitions), whereas for the corrugated substrate these transitions are "averaged" by the substrate surface roughness.

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PubMed2004

Squeezing wetting and nonwetting liquids.

We present molecular-dynamics results for the squeezing of octane (C8H18) between two approaching solid elastic walls with different wetting properties. The interaction energy between the octane bead units and the solid walls is varied from a very small value (1 meV), corresponding to a nonwetting surface with a very large contact angle (nearly 180 degrees), to a high value (18.6 meV) corresponding to complete wetting. When at least one of the solid walls is wetted by octane we observe well defined molecular layers develop in the lubricant film when the thickness of the film is of the order of a few atomic diameters. An external squeezing-pressure induces discontinuous, thermally activated changes in the number n of lubricant layers (n-->n-1 layering transitions). With increasing interaction energy between the octane bead units and the solid walls, the transitions from n to n-1 layers occur at higher average pressure. This results from the increasing activation barrier to nucleate the squeeze-out with increasing lubricant-wall binding energy (per unit surface area) in the contact zone. Thus, strongly wetting lubricant fluids are better boundary lubricants than the less wetting ones, and this should result in less wear. We analyze in detail the effect of capillary bridge formation (in the wetting case) and droplets formation (in the nonwetting case) on the forces exerted by the lubricant on the walls. For the latter case small liquid droplets may be trapped at the interface, resulting in a repulsive force between the walls during squeezing, until the solid walls come into direct contact, where the wall-wall interaction may be initially attractive. This effect is made use of in some practical applications, and we give one illustration involving conditioners for hair care application.

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