Accurate measurement of Kinetic Friction Coefficient by using two types of tribometer

Tribological tests are adopted to estimate the kinetic friction coefficient of the material of interest according to the ASTM standard. Typically, for the measurement process, several replicas as well as a post-processing data treatment are necessary to take into account the observed casual variability of the measurand. The paper describes a statistical approach for both Time and Frequency Domain analysis, aiming to highlight the most significant time intervals during each test replica. Experimental activity has been carried out by performing multiple tests through two different tribometers (ball-on-flat and ball-on-disk configurations) in order to verify the improvement allowed by the authors’ proposal about the dry friction coefficient measurement in terms of both accuracy and reliability.