title: Surface roughness and dry friction.
abstract: Persson's multiscale contact mechanics theory combined with a multiscale Brillouin-Prandtl-Tomlinson model is used to show that on the basis of these models "dry friction" [i.e., kinetic friction that remains at exceedingly small velocities (but still above the creep range) close to its value at higher velocities] should almost always occur for self-affine surfaces when the dominant interaction between two surfaces in contact is due to interatomic hard core repulsion, except for extremely smooth surfaces (i.e., surfaces with a Hurst index very close to 1).
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Complex Systems, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
authors.forename: J B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Sokoloff