Transition from stick to slip in Hertzian contact with "griffith" friction: The Cattaneo-Mindlin problem revisited

Classically, the transition from stick to slip is modelled with Amonton-Coulomb law, leading to the Cattaneo-Mindlin problem, which is amenable to quite general solutions using the idea of superposing normal contact pressure distributions - in particular superposing the full sliding component of shear with a corrective distribution in the stick region. However, faults model in geophysics and recent high-speed measurements of the real contact area and the strain fields in dry (nominally flat) rough interfaces at macroscopic but laboratory scale, all suggest that the transition from 'static' to 'dynamic' friction can be described, rather than by Coulomb law, by classical fracture mechanics singular solutions of shear cracks. Here, we introduce an 'adhesive' model for friction in a Hertzian spherical contact, maintaining the Hertzian solution for the normal pressures, but where the inception of slip is given by a Griffith condition. In the slip region, the standard Coulomb law continues to hold. This leads to a very simple solution for the Cattaneo-Mindlin problem, in which the "corrective" solution in the stick area is in fact similar to the mode II equivalent of a JKR singular solution for adhesive contact. The model departs from the standard Cattaneo-Mindlin solution, showing an increased size of the stick zone relative to the contact area, and a sudden transition to slip when the stick region reaches a critical size (the equivalent of the pull-off contact size of the JKR solution). The apparent static friction coefficient before sliding can be much higher than the sliding friction coefficient and, for a given friction fracture "energy", the process results in size and normal load dependence of the apparent static friction coefficient. Some qualitative agreement with Fineberg's group experiments for friction exists, namely the stick-slip boundary quasi-static prediction may correspond to the arrest of their slip "precursors", and the rapid collapse to global sliding when the precursors arrest front has reached about half the interface may correspond to the reach of the "critical" size for the stick zone