An extended bristle friction force model with experimental validation

Bristle friction force models have been used by many as a preferred method for modeling friction forces. The original bristle friction force model is one-dimensional. It represents the physical reality for some practical application cases but does not accurately represent the friction phenomenon of a general contact between two 3D objects because the friction force vector is possibly rotating in the time-varying common tangential plane of the contacting surfaces. In this research the original integrated bristle friction model is extended to a 3-dimensional model. With such an extension, the resulting friction force model can be used to compute friction forces in both sticking and sliding regimes for general contact dynamics modeling. Simulation examples are presented to demonstrate the application of the model. Experiments were designed and performed to validate the new model. The presented validation exercise demonstrated that the extended bristle friction model can well duplicate experimental results including typical frictional behaviors such as sliding, sticking and stick-slip.