Wear 301 (2013) 338–342

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Wear
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wear

The friction measurement between finger skin and material surfaces

Min-Seob Kim a, Il-Young Kim a, Yon-Kyu Park b, Young-Ze Lee a,n
a
Sungkyunkwan University, Republic of Korea
b
Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The surfaces of materials differ in topography and compatibility with human skin. Those differences
Received 1 September 2012 were distinguished by measuring the friction coefficients between a human finger and different types
Received in revised form of surfaces. Sample groups used in these tests were glass, plastic, and fabric. In the case of fabric, the
14 December 2012
following materials were used: linen, canvas, felt, silk, velvet, and cotton. Experiments were conducted
Accepted 15 December 2012
using a specially-designed apparatus under constant temperature and relative humidity. Two factors
Available online 17 January 2013
were identified using the finger friction measurements. First was the friction level and second was the
Keywords: variance in friction. In Particular, it was found that different surfaces show significantly different
Finger skin variance in their friction coefficients. Fitting parameters from a linear regression of the relationship
Surface
between friction coefficient and normal load were used to map materials’ responses.
Viscoelastic
& 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Skin tribology
Friction

1. Introduction
The friction between a finger and some solid surface has an
effect on how we perceive the surface. Also, there are several
other factors that can determine the friction characteristic of
surfaces people recognize, such as roughness, hardness and
elasticity of the material composing the counter surface. Of
course, these various physical factors are all factors that deter-
mine how people feel the surface. And also these parameters have
different levels of effective factor to tactile perception [1,2].
Despite the number of studies conducted to interpret and analyze
the relation between physical parameters and friction character-
istic of surface, little is known about how people recognize the
surfaces and what factors dominantly affect this discrimination.
Increasing interest in investigating how experimental/physical
parameters are related to the surface discrimination or estimation
of consumer’s satisfaction gives more motivation to researchers.
Development of a finger friction model based on experimental
parameters such as roughness or physical properties of the surface
composing material can make the product developer to control the
consumer tactile feel. The chosen materials (fabrics, plastic, and
glass) are the surfaces people encounter often in our daily life,
because these are widely used in various products such as mobile
display panel, finish of home appliances, clothes, and so on.
Therefore, this paper just started from these familiar things first.
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: þ82 31 299 6624; fax: þ 82 31 290 5276.
E-mail address: yzlee@skku.edu (Y.-Z. Lee).
Raja et al. [3] and Chen et al. [4] found that friction is an
important parameter for understanding the skin’s mechanical
state . In the literature related with friction measurement for
the surface, a number of studies have emerged during the last few
years, where friction has been measured via finger sliding over a
motionless surface [2–14], moving over a stationary finger skin
[14–16], or using a substitute having similar friction character-
istics with human skin [17]. In addition, there have been many
attempts to analyze tribological behavior between a skin and
some counter surfaces using finite element method (FEM) with
properties of human finger tissue [18].
According to the traditional theory, the coefficient of friction is
generally constant while the normal load condition changes.
However, the coefficient of friction between sliding fingers and
the surface varies with the changes of normal loads applied to the
surface [1,13,16]. The frictional characteristic of a sliding finger is
affected by the roughness and also many other properties of
tested surfaces. Especially, through observing the friction coeffi-
cient or the counter-surface’s roughness we can study for the
fundamental of tribological behavior such as ‘rough smooth’, or
‘grippy slippery’ [2].
The friction force is usually seen as a combination of forces
related to adhesion and deformation. A common assumption
in skin properties is that the deformation component can be
ignored and only the adhesive behavior has to be considered.
However, this deformation component is significant and cannot
be ignored [19].
Ishikubo and Noda reported that a relative change in the
course of sliding has an important influence on tactile feeling,
and permeability [20]. van Kuilenburg et al. studied the vibration

0043-1648/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wear.2012.12.036
 M.-S. Kim et al. / Wear 301 (2013) 338–342 339

detectability of human fingers through measuring the contact
area and normal load [21].
Skedung et al. did repeated finger friction measurements on
the same sample showing that only partial recovery of the
frictional behavior occurs and profilometry measurements before
and after stroking indicate small topographical changes asso-
ciated with repeated frictional contacts [22]. In addition, because
skin condition varies among experiment persons, and changes the
friction signal, this paper uses only one person to conduct the
experiments. This work group uses the index finger of experi-
menter to slide over the sample surface, because the large amount
of related studies use this finger and also we generally slide the
index finger over the counter surface.
This paper concluded that the characteristic of finger friction
measurement can be used to distinguish different surfaces. These
results can be utilized in many areas such as material designing,
device manufacturing industry interested in a reproduction of
surface, media producers interested in tactile contents, and so on.
2. Experimental detail
the standard weight. The mean value from three measurements
was used as a scale factor during the measurements. Maximum
system noise was about 0.003, and it was sufficiently low to
ensure that it did not interfere with the data acquisition.
2.3. Friction measurement
The experiments were conducted with the index fingers of one
experimenter who was a 24-year-old man. The laboratory atmo-
sphere conditions were maintained within a narrow range.
The temperature was about 251C and the humidity of room was
about 42%. The average sliding speed was specified as 15 mm/s. In
addition, apparent contact area was observed through glass sliding
and it was varied between 2 cm2 and 2.3 cm2. To keep the similar
condition of finger skin and sample surfaces during the experiment
periods, the experimenter removed the contaminant of sample using
alcohol periodically and washed his hand. There was a 5 min time
interval after each set of experiments, and each set was composed of
eight down strokes (see Fig. 3). The results of the analysis were based
on the 50 finger friction measurements per sample surface.

2.1. Sample surfaces 3. Results and discussion

The friction measurements were performed on eight sample 3.1. Differences in finger friction with different sample surfaces
surfaces, six kinds of fabrics, one plastic, and one glass (see Fig. 1).
The fabrics include linen, canvas, felt, silk, velvet, and cotton. To investigate the differences in finger friction between
These fabrics do not have uniform surface roughness or similar the surfaces, the coefficient of friction (COF) vs. the time graph
finish. The other two sample surfaces are plastic usually used in
home appliances and an uncoated window glass. The sample size
was about 15  50 mm2.

2.2. Measurement device

To investigate the real finger friction sliding over the surface, the
devices including two load cells were designed. The schematic
diagram of the equipment is shown in Fig. 2. The pad component
was designed to attach the sample using an adhesive tape. Two load
cells measured the normal load applied by the experimenter and the
shear force acting parallel with the sliding direction (down stroke
only). These data are transferred by DAQ, and then recorded with
corresponding time values using Labview with a sampling rate of
3000 Hz.
This experiment system was calibrated in the normal (Z) and
the directions corresponding with the stroke direction (X). Stan-
dard weights were placed and removed on the pad plate and
component exposed to friction force (X), while the output voltage
signal of the sensor was checked. Scale factors for the two
directions were obtained using the output voltage compared with Fig. 2. Schematic of finger friction measurement device.

Fig. 1. Photos of sample surfaces. (a) Fabric surfaces; linen, canvas, felt, silk, velvet, cotton. (b) Surfaces of plastic and window glass.
340 M.-S. Kim et al. / Wear 301 (2013) 338–342
of three different fabrics were compared (see Fig. 4). Through
investigating the finger friction results, using the time interval of
0.1 s where the experimenter stroke the mid-point of sample
surface in the X direction, we could figure out several conclusions.
The quantitative factors that we could obtain from the finger
friction measurements of fabric surfaces are the friction level, R2,
and the variance of each surface.
Results of the finger friction measurements using the canvas
surface show the average friction level of 4.421 and the variance
of 0.002297 (R2 value of 0.0122). Then the cotton surface shows
the average friction level of 2.872, and the variance of 0.000393
(R2 value of 0.447), and the silk surface shows average friction
level of 1.989, and the variance of 0.000167 (R2 value of 0.088).
When the friction measured from the finger sliding experi-
ment over the surface has high levels and high variance value, the
counter surface is likely to be hard or has large roughness value.
On the contrary, the surface which is composed of soft material or
has finely woven structure is likely to show lower friction levels
and variance.
When the surface is composed of soft material having low
surface roughness, the movement of sliding finger skin over the
Fig. 3. Photograph of a finger friction measurement.
Fig. 4. Comparison of finger friction results at 15 mm/s from various fabric surfaces. (a) Finger friction results with three fabric surfaces. (b) Enlarging graph from 0 s to 0.02 s.
surface will be much easier. Contrary to this, a very rough surface
composed of hard and rigid materials is likely to require more
efforts to keep the sliding over the surface. It seems that the result
of the finger friction measurement over the several surfaces can
also be explained in such a way. In addition, up and down
movement may come from the counter-surface’s roughness and
that can lead to vibration and discontinuity of friction force. It
could be the clue for the interpretation of skin–counter surface
tribological behavior.
3.2. Relationship between normal load and coefficient of friction
The raw data acquired from the experiment of finger friction
measurement are shown in Fig. 5. From these finger friction data,
we collected 50 pairs of loge (load) and loge (COF) per sample
surface. Then, linear regression was conducted (see Fig. 6). There-
fore, we can assume the following equation: loge (COF) ¼C0 þC1
loge (load), and investigate the relationship between the sample
surface and C0, C1.
C0 and C1 values are given in Table 1, and these are plotted in
Fig. 7.
As we can see from Fig. 7, fabrics, plastic, and glass show
different regression coefficients. Although the cotton surface and
plastic surface are relatively in a close position, it seems that
there likely are other physical/experimental factors which can
contribute to the distinction of the surface from each other.
In addition, this approach can be applied to discriminate the
surface difference based on finger friction measurement.
The friction force comes from two origins; an adhesion term
and a deformation term. Adhesion is likely to be more prominent
when there is a large contact area, or a pair of materials is more
compliant mechanically or chemical compatibility is high. When
the finger slides over the surface, stroke movement will make the
real contact area bigger. In addition, the real contact area (Ar) is
 M.-S. Kim et al. / Wear 301 (2013) 338–342 341

Fig. 5. Normal load and shear force vs. time (raw data of eight strokes over the cotton fabric).

friction measurement, in some cases, it varies with the differences

in skin condition.
The regression coefficients are interrelated with these compo-
nents, and therefore, they can provide us with information to
interpret the tribological mechanism. In order for there to be
more describable solution, it has to be kept up with investigation
of various sample surfaces.

4. Conclusion

This study suggested the methodology for discrimination of

different surfaces by measuring the friction between finger skin
and material surfaces. Sample surfaces with different topologies
and chemical (or mechanical) compatibilities with skin were
Fig. 6. Result of regression (dashed line: y¼  0.8018, x 0.1062) using linen surface.
prepared and tested multiple times.
Two useful parameters emerged from the finger friction
measurements. The first was the finger friction level and the
Table 1 second was the variance in friction. A linear regression analysis of
List of sample surfaces and their regression coefficients, C0 and C1. the relationship between the normal load and the coefficient of
friction was performed, and the fitting parameters were used to
Linen Canvas Felt Silk Velvet Cotton Plastic Glass
map the surface material response. While this study used limited
C0  0.106  0.203  0.181 0.070  0.147 0.212 0.160 0.844 experimental conditions and only one test subject, it nevertheless
C1  0.802  0.789  0.764  0.800  0.839  0.840  0.870  0.826 suggests a method of analysis in which surfaces of various types
can be correlated with friction and tactile response.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Technology Innovation

Program (or Industrial Strategic Technology Development
Program, 10041066, Development of tactile information storing and
playing platform based on flexible sensors for immersible media)
funded by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE, Korea).

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