Experimental study on the load-area relation of rough surfaces and comparison with theoretical model

It is of critical significance to accurately measure or predict the real contact areas between rough solids in engineering. In this study, based on the frustrated total internal reflection technique and an Otsu method, an optical apparatus is designed to capture the real contact areas between rough metallic samples and flat quartz glass. Moreover, an incremental equivalent contact model developed recently by our group is adopted to predict the load-area relationship. For samples of various materials and morphologies, it is found that the proposed contact model agrees well with the experimentally measured results, which verifies the efficiency of the incremental equivalent contact model.