Fretting wear behavior of silicone rubber with biomimetic surface texture

Surface texture, as an important surface engineering technique, can enhance the tribological properties of contact surfaces. This work presents the experimental investigation of the fretting wear behavior of silicone rubber films with biomimetic surface texture under a spherical indenter. Inspired by human fingerprints and tree frog toe pads, hexagonal loop textures with three different texture spacing are created on the surface of silicone rubber films. Three types of indenters are considered: stainless steel, polypropylene, and silicone rubber. The impact of texture spacing, displacement amplitude, normal force, frequency, and indenter material on fretting wear behaviors is discussed in detail. The wear volume is measured by the three-dimensional white light profiler. The surface wear morphology and fretting wear mechanism of textured surfaces are analyzed using a scanning electron microscope. It is found that adding surface texture can effectively decrease the coefficient of friction (COF) of silicone rubber. In addition, the smaller the texture spacing, the more pronounced COF decreases, and the lower the specific wear rate.