An Approach to Measure Slips in Friction Contacts Using a Self-Powered Sensor

Abstract

The accumulation of small tangential slip will occur on the contact surfaces of components in mechanical structures when subjected to cyclic loadings, which will lead to system failure. However, the small tangential slip is difficult to measure directly. In this paper, a method for measuring the contact slip by using a self-powered displacement sensor based on triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is proposed, and the accuracy is verified by the finite element analysis (FEA). The contact slips for a flat-on-flat contact configuration are measured by this method. When the test piece is subjected to a cyclic tangential load with a frequency of 10Hz, the average obtained slip displacement of the test piece under single load cycle is less than 10μm. Then the finite element simulation of the contact configuration is carried out using software Abaqus 6.14. The analysis results are close to the test results, which verifies the effectiveness of the measurement method. Moreover, the slips of the flat-on-flat contact configuration under different frequency and amplitude of cyclic tangential load are investigated.