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The crawling process of snakes is known to have fascinating tribological phenomena, whereas investigations on their frictional properties depending on patterned cuticles are insufficient. In this study, we have designed and fabricated biomimetic microstructures inspired by the geometric microunits of Achalinus spinalis cuticle using polyurethane acrylate (PUA) material and performed its tribological analysis. The micro-morphology of this Achalinus-inspired textured polymer surface (AITPS) is characterized by the closely and evenly quasi-rectangular microgrooves, periodically arranged along certain orientations. We have compared the frictional performance of our fabricated AITPS with other competitive microstructure, using a smooth steel ball and commercial clay as an interacting surface. After performing massive friction tests with steel ball and clay, AITPS still maintains good resistance reduction performed compared to the patterned surface with straight microgrooves, which is most likely due to the reduction of actual contact areas at the frictional interface.


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Resistance reduction of patterned surface inspired by cuticle structure of Achalinus spinalis

Show Author's information Jiahui ZHAO1Keju JI1( )Qin CHEN2Muhammad Niaz KHAN1Chongwen TU1Ze MA1Jianming WU1Jian CHEN1Zhendong DAI1( )
Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Bionic Functional Materials, College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China

Abstract

The crawling process of snakes is known to have fascinating tribological phenomena, whereas investigations on their frictional properties depending on patterned cuticles are insufficient. In this study, we have designed and fabricated biomimetic microstructures inspired by the geometric microunits of Achalinus spinalis cuticle using polyurethane acrylate (PUA) material and performed its tribological analysis. The micro-morphology of this Achalinus-inspired textured polymer surface (AITPS) is characterized by the closely and evenly quasi-rectangular microgrooves, periodically arranged along certain orientations. We have compared the frictional performance of our fabricated AITPS with other competitive microstructure, using a smooth steel ball and commercial clay as an interacting surface. After performing massive friction tests with steel ball and clay, AITPS still maintains good resistance reduction performed compared to the patterned surface with straight microgrooves, which is most likely due to the reduction of actual contact areas at the frictional interface.

Keywords: friction, microstructure, biomimetic, resistance reduction

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Publication history

Received: 27 April 2022
Revised: 19 July 2022
Accepted: 07 September 2022
Published: 09 December 2022
Issue date: July 2023

Copyright

© The author(s) 2022.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52075249) and the foundation of Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Bionic Functional Materials, China. The authors thank Xipeng WANG and Tingwei HUO in Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China, for help in the AFM and LEXT experiments.

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