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Re: tribophysics



On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Keith C. Tipton wrote:

Haha, do you know what that is? I had to look it up myself.

I am looking for a source of into about triboelectric behavior of
different materials. I recently had some unexpected (but not uncommon,
so I'm told) trouble rubbing wool on a plastic rod. Sometimes the rod
charged up negatively, sometimes positively. It was suggested that the
materials were too close on a 'triboelectric scale.' Well, maybe, maybe
not. Where can I find information like that? It's not in the old
physics books I used in college. Is it engineering info?


Somewhere I have some photocopies of papers from a UK publication. I
recall that several were mentioned in "Flying Circus of Physics with
answers." Several in Am. J. of Physics were mintioned there, but I've not
tracked them down.

The upshot: the triboelectric series is valid for contact, but not for
friction. When flat samples were passed between rollers, the polarity was
replicable, but when they were rubbed, results varied, and surface finish
then became important. There was evidence that thermal effects were
important, and when a long object was stroked across a tiny spot on
another object, polarity was different than when it was stroked along a
wide area of the second object. And in violation of conventional wisdom,
when *identical* materials but with differing roughness were rubbed
together, charge separation was significant!


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