The Effect of Reduction of Friction Heat by Micro Dimple on the Sliding Surface of Elastomer

Micro-dimples on sliding surfaces have been investigated to reduce the frictional forces on metal bearing surfaces; however, for an elastomer, such as thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), this has not been studied. The material properties of an elastomer are affected by temperature, and this can shorten the life of the elastomer. In this paper, micro-dimples were applied on the surface of an elastomer in order to reduce the frictional heating, which was experimentally investigated using pin-on-disk apparatus while the surface temperature was measured. To obtain optimal design parameters, the design of the experiment was applied, and the shape of the section, size, depth and density of micro-dimples were selected as the design parameters. The results show that the size of the dimple is the most important design parameter.