What does friction really depend on? Robust governing parameters in contact mechanics and friction

It is known that the coefficient of friction generally depends on a large number of system and loading parameters. Already Coulomb presented experimental evidence that the static coefficient of friction may depend on time, on normal force, on the contact size, on the nature of contacting materials, and on the presence of intermediate lubricant layers. For the sliding coefficient of friction, he observed the dependence on the sliding velocity as well as the force and size dependencies. Later research has shown that the friction coefficient is very sensitive to the presence of oscillations (including self-excited vibrations). In spite of the practical importance of the problem, no generalized laws of friction or empirical procedures for measuring and representing the law of friction have been developed so far, which included at least the following four parameters: contacting body velocity, normal force, shape (and thus implicitly size), and time. In the present paper, we discuss the question of how the dimension of space of governing parameters can be reduced and if a small set of “robust governing parameters” of friction can be identified. We argue that one of such robust governing parameters is the indentation depth (or relative approach) of contacting bodies and discuss further candidates for the role of robust governing parameters.