Friction

Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and material elements sliding against each other. Friction plays a role in applications in a broad range of different fields including foods, biomedical, mechanical and automotive engineering as evidently reducing friction means reducing material wear, costs and energy savings.

Friction plays an important role during processing of food products, but also in the mouthfeel of food products caused by the chewing and eating motions in the mouth. Nowadays we have reasonable understanding of dry friction on hard materials, however there is still much work to do on understanding the physics and physical chemistry behind the frictional soft and/or fluid-immersed solids such as hydrogels.