Tomlinson Model (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Phenomenological model introduced in 1929 by the British physicist G.A. Tomlinson and used to interpret friction on the atomic scale.Essentially, a nanotip is dragged by a spring over a corrugated energy landscape. A "frictional parameter" can be introduce to describe the ratio between the energy corrugation and the elastic energy stored in the spring.In Russia this model was introduced by the Soviet physicist Yakov Frenkel. The Frenkel defect became firmly fixed in the physics of solids and liquids. In the 1930s, his research was supplemented with works on the theory of plastic deformation. His theory, now known as the Frenkel-Kontorova model, is important in the study of dislocations. (Note: Kontorova was a female scientist working with Frenkel.)