Stick–Slip Motion and Static Friction in a Nonlinear Deformable Substrate Potential

The dynamical behaviour caused by dry friction is studied in a model of two spring-blocks system pulled with constant velocity over a nonsinusoidal substrate potential with variable shape. We focus our attention on a class of parameterized Remoissenet–Peyrard potential, whose shape can be varied as a function of a parameter, and which has the sine-wave shape as a particular case. The dynamics of the model is carefully studied both numerically and analytically. For a good selection of the parameter systems, the motion of each block involves periodic stick–slip, intermittent and sliding motions. We show that our strategy helps in obtaining an insight into the time of the beginning of the slip (slip prediction) and the time of the stop (time prediction). The analytical results obtained for the static friction are in good agreement with numerical analysis.