The most general frictional motion in nature involves bimaterial interfaces, when contacting bodies possess different elastic properties. Frictional motion occurs when the contacts composing the interface separating these bodies detach via propagating rupture fronts. Coupling between slip and normal stress variations is unique to bimaterial interfaces. Here we use high speed simultaneous measurements of slip velocities, real contact area and stresses to explicitly reveal this bimaterial coupling and its role in determining different classes of rupture modes and their structures. We directly observe slip-pulses, highly localized slip accompanied by large local reduction of the normal stress near the rupture tip. These pulses propagate in the direction of motion of the softer material at a selected (maximal) velocity and continuously evolve while propagating. In the opposite direction bimaterial coupling favors crack-like ‘supershear' fronts. The robustness of these structures shows the importance of bimaterial coupling to frictional motion and modes of frictional dissipation.
We experimentally and analytically explore supershear ruptures that are excited at the onset of frictional motion within “bimaterial interfaces,” frictional interfaces formed by contacting bodies having different elastic (or geometric) properties. Our experiments on PMMA blocks sliding on polycarbonate show that the structure, transition sequence, and range of existence of such supershear ruptures are highly dependent on their propagation direction relative to the slip direction in the softer of the two materials. These properties are characterized for both the positive (parallel) and negative (antiparallel) propagation directions. An analytic, fracture‐mechanics based description of supershear ruptures is derived. The theory quantitatively predicts both supershear structure and the allowed propagation range of supershear ruptures. The latter compares well with both the experimentally observed supershear ruptures in the negative direction as well as localized slip pulses in the positive direction, whose propagation speed lies between the shear velocities of both materials. Supershear ruptures in the positive direction, which are composed of trains of propagating slip pulses, evade this theoretical description.
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