title: Adiabatic molecular-dynamics-simulation-method studies of kinetic friction.
abstract: An adiabatic molecular-dynamics method is developed and used to study the Muser-Robbins model for dry friction (i.e., nonzero kinetic friction in the slow sliding speed limit). In this model, dry friction between two crystalline surfaces rotated with respect to each other is due to mobile molecules (i.e., dirt particles) adsorbed at the interface. Our adiabatic method allows us to quickly locate interface potential-well minima, which become unstable during sliding of the surfaces. Since dissipation due to friction in the slow sliding speed limit results from mobile molecules dropping out of such unstable wells, our method provides a way to calculate dry friction, which agrees extremely well with results found by conventional molecular dynamics for the same system, but our method is more than a factor of 10 faster.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department and Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Complex Systems, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: J B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Sokoloff