Joaquín Solano-Ramírez

Dry friction cannot be understood on a macroscopic scale without knowing what happens at the contact of sliding surfaces on an atomic scale. Tests on this scale are very expensive and very sensitive to the effects of contamination or inaccurate fittings. On the other hand, the sample dimensions are small because of the requirements of the test equipment, which makes it difficult to generalise the conclusions drawn. This work reviews the models used to analyse friction processes, and proposes the application of one of the models, the Frenkel–Kontorova–Tomlinson (FKT) model, to study the dry frictional behaviour of doped surfaces. The study shows that for concreted types of doped pattern, the behaviour can change from chaotic to periodic depending on the stiffness, which in turn are associated with temperature.