An experimental study on roughness noise of dry rough flat surfaces

This paper presents an experimental study of the friction noise, between two rough and dry flat surfaces. The domain of interest is the dry contact under light pressure where the roughness is the dominant cause of noise. The results show that, for sliding rough surfaces under light load, the fundamental mechanism of radiated noise is the presence of shocks occurring between antagonist asperities of sliding surfaces. The radiated roughness noise is controlled simultaneously by the detailed topography of the surfaces in contact, the sliding speed and the dynamics of the surfaces. In terms of topography and sliding speed, it was shown that the roughness noise is simultaneously an increasing linear function of the logarithm of the surface roughness and the sliding speed. In terms of dynamics, the roughness noise is generated for light dynamical coupling. Hence, the natural modes of samples are stiffer than the contact and therefore the resulting vibrations are not affected by the additional rigidity. The deformation of surfaces during contact is very light and its magnitude is negligible compared to the surface roughness.