INFLUENCE OF WEAR ON FRICTION VARIATION IN CONCRETE SLIDING INTERFACES

In civil engineering, studying the interaction between two sliding rigid-bodies can lead to gain insight into the behavior of the discontinuities of certain types of structures (for example cracked concrete dams or friction base isolated structures) when they have endured dynamic loading in several occasions. This paper presents the results of a research performed on the time variation of the frictional characteristics of a concrete-concrete sliding interface. The dependency of the static and dynamic friction coefficients on the number of dynamic loading-cycles was evaluated. To this end, two concrete blocks were subjected to 18,000 sliding cycles in a shaking table. The test results show a strong dependency of both static and dynamic friction coefficient on the interface changes due to wear on the contact surfaces.