Biomimetic Structure Design And Experiments For Improving The Tribological Characteristic Of The Rubber Surface

In this paper, we use the function and the observation results of microscopic structure of foot pad of tettigonioidea and tree frog as basis, then imitate micro-structure of these two animals' plantars, based on bionic thinking, and apply the principles of similar-engineering to design and make four different structural elements of the bionic surface morphology on the surface of rubber sheet, and five kinds of samples of the surface morphology for the comparative test. Through the analysis of the experiment to study the effect of the maximum static friction of the rubber materials which with the different width of the trench, grounding area, the morphology and the arrangement of the cell structure on the surface morphology.The paper used the UMT-2 Multi-Specimen to make the tribology test to the SBR (styrene-butadiene rubber) and the palmer pad of the Tettigonioidea's tarsal-foot, and surveyed the effect of load and speed to the friction coefficient on different roughness substrates. The result of the test shows that the friction coefficient of the SBR and the palm pad of Tettigonioidea's tarsal foot on substrates has obvious consistency trend with the load's changing, and these two materials has a certain similarity in the Tribology.A friction test platform has been designed and created, and been used to make the test to rubber friction productions. The paper inspected the maximum static friction in the station on different substrates. We could get the follow conclusions through the comprehensive analysis of the above test results:Under the condition of the flat glass as the substrate, the maximum static frictions of all samples in water condition are greatly reduced by comparing with no water condition, which shows that the lubrication effect of water as the medium is significant: the 1st sample has manifested the strong properties of adhesion or friction both in two tests of flat glasses as the basements (water and no water),which shows that the sample of the Bionic morphology inherited part of the structure advantages of the biology prototype, it suitable for the friction of the smooth surface and the state of water as a medium.In the test of five different sandpaper roughness as the substrates, the static friction of No. 2, 4 and 5 is larger oppositely and had the same trend in different test groups, which shows that these three samples are quite suitable for the condition of this sandpaper as the substrate. by comparing with the conditions, if such a surface morphology can be applied to the tire tread, the adhesion between the tire and asphalt pavement will be effectively improved. The maximum static friction of No.1 and 0 have not obvious changed, while the maximum static friction of other samples have dropped significantly with the increasing of number of the sandpapers (decrease roughness), No. 2 sample had the most obvious downward trend and the largest decline; and the maximum static frictions of No.7, 8 and 9 sample in different test groups are relatively small, from which we can speculate that these surface morphologies are not suitable for improving the products of friction or adhesion of rubber surface.In addition, through the analysis of the test results also found that a certain kind of surface morphology has strong attachment capability is to relatively some specific substrate conditions. There is no such a surface morphology could adapt to all substrate conditions, such as: the 4th surface morphology is suitable for the conditions of the 60 Head sandpaper as the substrate and sand as the medium, while it is not suitable for the conditions of glass as the substrate; the 1st surface morphology adapts to the conditions of the smooth surface and the substrate of water as the medium and not to the rough substrate conditions; the 2nd surface morphology adapts to rough the substrate conditions and is not good at interacting with the smooth surface.The analysis results of the direction of force to the adhesion ability of the surface morphology showed that: rubber samples which in the same test condition, the maximum static friction related with the distribution of the surface morphology on the direction of force; on the other hand, which reflects that different surface morphologies and distribution have the important impact to the tribology capability of specific materials, which further confirmed the vision that by changing the surface morphology of the materials to improve the adhesion of rubber surface.