Aleks, first, welcome.
Second, yes, we're not a scientific forum, but a technical one. Many of us are engineers (you know, these people who don't get paid if what they create in their minds doesn't work in the real world...
). So, we're concerned more with actual performances of tyres under friction, a consideration which severely restrict what you can actually write here with confidence on the understanding of the majority. Anyway, I think your article is readable even for people like me, that is, people which is always thinking "how does this equation relate to what I am building?".
Thirdly, well, I think we've already discussed the work of Bo Person, of course in engineering terms. We showed how the apparent contact area is not constant, how the different forces at the different "levels" of asperities, from atomic to microscopic sizes, influence the total friction and the phenomena of direct contact friction. Actually, if you dig the forum you will find, for example, a couple of posts on the history of tribology and how this new theory of friction presented in your article led to a better understanding of how is the melted rubber that flows into the interface of rubber and pavement what gives tyres its grip. The conclusion presented is that
Formula One tyres are not worn out, they are sucked dry. We thought at that moment, some years ago, that this meant a new paradigm, at least for tyre engineers (although the fact has been known from experience for some time, the equations behind it were not understood, that I know). I can tell you that the discussion that followed was lively.
Actually,
we wondered how this new paradigm could have influenced the Formula One championship, given the fact that Mr. Person numbers and theory were used by Ferrari to describe the way the tyres used at that moment in the championship worked. They (Ferrari) were dominant for some years
and the suspension dampers they used were radically different from the ones used by their competitors. This happened in rapid sucession after the first articles by Mr. Person were published, and its work validated and advanced by some scientists teaching at an Italian university very close to FIAT. Part of the working group were actually working for the Italian car manufacturer... so you can imagine how suspicious we were of their relationship with the tyre manufacturer, which indirectly financed Mr. Person work. He even appeared in some pictures with the tyres and the equations in the background. As you can see I'm so paranoid as to be able to think that this theory created Ferrari dominance and multiple championships for Michael Schumacher, but I repeat, I'm a
mere engineer and not among the best.
What I don't see clearly (I apologize in advance in case this sounds too... I don't know, too
something) is which are the new contributions in your article to Mr. Person theory.
What was that I did not dig entirely? Are you actually recycling his ideas or there is some new contribution I cannot discern? Again, I'm sorry if this sound rude or based in ignorance, but I agree heartily with you:
after more than a century with ridiculously small advances in understanding friction, a better theory was needed and more clever experiments were to be made. As I said, I thought this void have already been filled by Mr. Person.
In fourth place, there are some parts in the article I do not understand very well (my fault, I'm sure), specially the part of the weight supported by a needle as a kind of new "thought experiment" that changes the outcome of friction values when compared with a "classic thought experiment". Could you rephrase it for an engineer? Is the weight on top of the needle moving with respect to the weight below or are they moving together, for starters?
I also have not the slightest idea of how the green rollers shown in your article actually work and it's not apparent from the picture presented (at least not to me), so I fail to grasp the conclusions you get from the numbers shown.
Lemme tell you that I still have to find a scientific article on this new development in tribology that can be explained in laymen terms to my colleagues. Some of us, with a little scientific training, actually find joy in this role of "translators", that is, translators from "hard science paper" to "technical advice article". Anyway, the article you wrote is the easiest to understand of all the papers on this subject that I've found. JTom post (to me) shows that either a) the conclusions are not that important for real world practice or b) it's a secret (again?
).
Having said all that, I want to emphatically say "thanks a lot" for introducing us to your article, pretty interesting.
In a forum there is a lot of different people with different intentions and responses to one's input, so don't despair if some answers show you that not everybody understand what you write. Actually, I'm confessing I did not understand it very well!
I, for one, would actually beg you to continue "polluting" the forum with your "shameless" self adverts of scientific work. As mentioned already, you probably have the evil intention of spreading knowledge.
Finally, my skates are a bit rusty these days, I'm living two degrees north of the Equator.
