title: Modelling of the frictional behaviour of the snake skin covered by anisotropic surface nanostructures.
abstract: Previous experimental data clearly revealed anisotropic friction on the ventral scale surface of snakes. However, it is known that frictional properties of the ventral surface of the snake skin range in a very broad range and the degree of anisotropy ranges as well to a quite strong extent. This might be due to the variety of species studied, diversity of approaches used for the friction characterization, and/or due to the variety of substrates used as a counterpart in the experiments. In order to understand the interactions between the nanostructure arrays of the ventral surface of the snake skin, this study was undertaken, which is aimed at numerical modeling of frictional properties of the structurally anisotropic surfaces in contact with various size of asperities. The model shows that frictional anisotropy appears on the snake skin only on the substrates with a characteristic range of roughness, which is less or comparable with dimensions of the skin microstructure. In other words, scale of the skin relief should reflect an adaptation to the particular range of surfaces asperities of the substrate.
authors.affiliation: Department of Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, Kiel University, Am Botanischen Garten 1-9, D-24118 Kiel, Germany.|Donetsk Institute for Physics and Engineering, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Donetsk, Ukraine.
authors.forename: Alexander E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Filippov
authors.affiliation: Department of Functional Morphology and Biomechanics, Kiel University, Am Botanischen Garten 1-9, D-24118 Kiel, Germany.
authors.forename: Stanislav N
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Gorb
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D016880:Anisotropy; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D017276:Friction; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000648:ultrastructure; D010316:Particle Size; D012879:Skin Physiological Phenomena; D012911:Snakes / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D013499:Surface Properties