The frictional behavior of mild steel under horizontal vibration

The present paper investigates experimentally the effect of external horizontal vibration on friction property of mild steel. To do so, a pin-on-disc apparatus having facility of vibrating the test samples in horizontal direction was designed and fabricated. Horizontal vibration is created along the sliding direction of vibration and perpendicular to the direction of vibration. The experimental setup has the facility to vary the amplitudes and frequencies of vibration while velocity of vibration is kept constant. During the experiment, the frequency and amplitude of vibration were varied from 0 to 500 Hz and 0 to 200 μm, respectively. Results show that the friction coefficient increases with the increase in amplitude and frequency of vibration for mild steel. The horizontal vibration can be of two types: one along the direction of sliding (longitudinal direction) and the other along the perpendicular direction of sliding (transverse direction). For both the cases, test sample slides horizontally. It is found that the magnitude of friction coefficient for longitudinal vibration is less than that for under transverse vibration. These results are analyzed by dimensional analysis to correlate the friction coefficient with sliding velocity, frequency and amplitude of vibration. The experimental results are also compared with those available in literature and simple physical explanations are provided.