- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review B

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Editors' Suggestion
  • Open Access

Flash temperature in sliding contacts

M. H. Müser1 and B. N. J. Persson2,3,4,*

  • *Contact author: b.persson@fz-juelich.de
PDF

Phys. Rev. B 114, 115407 – Published 14 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2clt-t25r

Abstract

The temperature increase in the contact regions between solids in sliding contact can easily reach several hundred Kelvin and thereby dramatically affect friction and wear. The classical theories by Jaeger, Archard, and Greenwood, commonly used to estimate flash temperature, ignore the multiscale nature of real surfaces and instead approximate the frictional heat sources with circular or square shapes. Here, we present an analytical theory for the flash temperature valid for randomly rough surfaces with roughness across arbitrarily many decades in length scale. The theory extends established methods for stress correlation functions and peak stresses to temperature. Numerical results for rubber sliding on concrete, and granite on granite, are presented as illustrations. We show that classical theories for flash temperature fail severely for surfaces with multiscale roughness.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (43)

  1. B. N. J. Persson, Ice friction: Role of non-uniform frictional heating and ice premelting, J. Chem. Phys. 143, 224701 (2015).
  2. S. L. Bore, B. N. J. Persson, and H. A. Sveinsson, Why ice is so slippery, arXiv:2603.11539.
  3. A. J. Tuononen, A. Kriston, and B. N. J. Persson, Multiscale physics of rubber-ice friction, J. Chem. Phys. 145, 114703 (2016).
  4. A. Atila, S. V. Sukhomlinov, and M. H. Müser, Cold self-lubrication of sliding ice, Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 066204 (2025).
  5. A. D. K. Pinto, D. Mazuyer, and J. Cayer-Barrioz, Ice–rubber friction mechanisms across scales, Soft Matter 22, 2514 (2026).
  6. M. R. Barbery, F. M. Chester, and J. S. Chester, Investigating dynamic weakening in laboratory faults using multi-scale flash heating coupled with mm-scale contact evolution, J. Geophys. Res.: Solid Earth 128, e2023JB027110 (2023).
  7. J. R. Rice, Heating and weakening of faults during earthquake slip, J. Geophys. Res. 111, B05311 (2006).
  8. C.-C. Hung and A. R Niemeijer, High-speed infrared thermography for measuring flash temperatures in sheared fault gouge analogues, Geosci. Instrum. Method. Data Syst. 14, 513 (2025).
  9. B. N. J. Persson, Rubber friction: Role of the flash temperature, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 18, 7789 (2006).
  10. G. Fortunato, V. Ciaravola, A. Furno, B. Lorenz, and B. N. J. Persson, General theory of frictional heating with application to rubber friction, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 27, 175008 (2015).
  11. B. N. J. Persson, Role of frictional heating in rubber friction, Tribol. Lett. 56, 77 (2014).
  12. S. V. Sukhomlinov, M. H. Müser, and B. N. J. Persson, Granite sliding on granite: Friction, wear rates, surface topography, and the scale-dependence of rate-state effects, Rep. Prog. Phys. 89, 038301 (2026).
  13. T. E. Fischer, Tribochemsstry, Annu. Rev. Mater. Sci. 18, 303 (1988).
  14. M. Kalin and J. Vizinti, High temperature phase transformations under fretting conditions, Wear 249, 172 (2001).
  15. B. N. J. Persson, On the flash temperature in accelerated sliding contacts, arXiv:2606.11832.
  16. J. C. Jaeger, Moving sources of heat and the temperature at sliding contacts, J. Proc. R. Soc. N. S. W. 76, 203 (1943).
  17. J. F. Archard, The temperature of rubbing surfaces, Wear 2, 438 (1959).
  18. J. A. Greenwood, An interpolation formula for flash temperatures, Wear 150, 153 (1991).
  19. J. R. Barber, Distribution of heat between sliding surfaces, J. Mech. Engng. Sci. 9, 351 (1967).
  20. F. E. Kennedy Jr., Thermal and thermomechanical effects in dry sliding, Wear 100, 453 (1984).
  21. J. Choudhry, A. Almqvist, and R. Larsson, A multi-scale contact temperature model for dry sliding rough surfaces, Tribol. Lett. 69, 128 (2021).
  22. X. Tian and F. E. Kennedy, Maximum and average flash temperatures in sliding contacts, J. Tribol. 116, 167 (1994).
  23. T. Reddyhoff, A. Schmidt, and H. Spikes, Thermal conductivity and flash temperature, Tribol. Lett. 67, 22 (2019).
  24. D. Zhu and Y.-Z. Hu, A computer program package for the prediction of EHL and mixed lubrication characteristics, friction, subsurface stresses and flash temperatures based on measured 3-D surface roughness, Tribol. Trans. 44, 383 (2001).
  25. J. Choudhry, A. Almqvist, and R. Larsson, Validation of a multi-scale contact temperature model for dry sliding rough surfaces, Lubricants 10, 41 (2022).
  26. G. Sutter and N. Ranc, Flash temperature measurement during dry friction process at high sliding speed, Wear 268, 1237 (2010).
  27. B. N. J. Persson, Flash temperature in sliding contacts: Comparing theory with experiments, arXiv:2604.15969.
  28. S. K. Chey, P. Tian, and Y. Tian, Estimation of real contact area during sliding friction from interface temperature, AIP Adv. 6, 065227 (2016).
  29. L. Zhang, M. Pumera, S. Sanchez, and X. Ma, Introduction to micro- and nano-motors, Nanoscale 16, 19936 (2024).
  30. H. Su, T. Pan, L. LI, C.-F. Yang, Y.-H. Cui, and H.-Z. Ji, Frictional heat-induced phase transformation on train wheel surface, J. Iron Steel Res. Int. 15, 49 (2008).
  31. B. N. J. Persson, B. Lorenz, and A. I. Volokitin, Heat transfer between elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces, Eur. Phys. J. E 31, 3 (2010).
  32. J. R. Barber, Bounds on the electrical resistance between contacting elastic rough bodies, Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. A 459, 53 (2003).
  33. B. N. J. Persson and J. Biele, Heat transfer in granular media with weakly interacting particles, AIP Adv. 12, 105307 (2022).
  34. B. N. J. Persson, Heat transfer in granular media consisting of particles in humid air at low confining pressure, Eur. Phys. J. B 96, 14 (2023).
  35. B. N. J. Persson, On the elastic energy and stress correlation in the contact between elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 20, 312001 (2008).
  36. B. N. J. Persson, R. Xu, N. Miyashita, Rubber wear: Experiment and theory, J. Chem. Phys. 162, 074704 (2025).
  37. N. Miyashita and B. N. J. Persson, Tire tread block dynamics, arXiv:2602.22078.
  38. S. Hyun, L. Pei, J. F. Molinari, and M. O. Robbins, Finite-element analysis of contact between elastic self-affine surfaces, Phys. Rev. E 70, 026117 (2004).
  39. B. N. J. Persson, Contact mechanics for randomly rough surfaces, Surf. Sci. Rep. 61, 201 (2006).
  40. N. Prodanov, W. G. Dapp, and M. H. Müser, On the contact area and mean gap of rough, elastic contacts: Dimensional analysis, numerical corrections, and reference data, Tribol. Lett. 53, 433 (2014).
  41. M. H. Müser, W. B. Dapp, R. Bugnicourt, P. Sainsot, N. Lesaffre, T. A. Lubrecht, B. N. J. Persson, K. Harris, A. Bennett, K. Schulze, et al., Meeting the contact-mechanics challenge, Tribol. Lett. 65, 118 (2017).
  42. C. Campañá and M. H. Müser, Practical Green's function approach to the simulation of elastic semi-infinite solids, Phys. Rev. B 74, 075420 (2006).
  43. C. Müller, M. H. Müser, G. Carbone, and N. Menga, Significance of elastic coupling for stresses and leakage in frictional contacts, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 156201 (2023).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. B 114, 115407– Published 14 August, 2026
  • Received 3 April 2026
  • Accepted 22 July 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation