Surface topography significantly influences tactile friction and perception. While friction forces can be reduced by surface texturing, selection of pattern dimensions is challenging due to the highly variable elastic modulus of the skin. This work proposes an empirical approach for the evaluation of the skin elasticity through surface transition from asperity to full contact state. To highlight the contact transition, two textures with evenly distributed identical micro asperities, but varying density, were moulded with several grades of silicone rubber. Dynamic friction coefficient measurements were performed during finger pad sliding against the textured samples with a range of normal loads up to 5 N. A combination of analytical and numerical contact models is used to explain the observed friction behaviour, estimate the development of contact area and calculate the effective elastic modulus of the skin at the micro-scale. Low density textures clearly indicate the transition to the full contact state, which is reflected in friction coefficient development, while high density textures remain in an asperity contact state, with significantly lower friction values. The effective Young's modulus is hereby estimated in the range of 0.2–0.5 MPa. Observed frictional behaviour is explained by the change in the apparent and real contact areas. The presented approach allows to study the influence of individual surface parameters on effective skin elastic modulus, which is essential for the development of functional surfaces with improved tactile perception.@en

Complex cycling workflows are fundamental to numerical weather prediction (NWP) and related environmental forecasting systems. Large numbers of jobs are executed at regular intervals to process new data and generate new forecasts. Dependence between these forecast cycles creates a single never-ending workflow, but NWP workflow schedulers have traditionally ignored this-at the cost of efficiency when running “off the clock”-by enforcing a simpler nonoverlapping sequence of single-cycle workflows. Cylc (“Silk”)1 -3 is designed to manage infinite cycling workflows efficiently even after delays in real-time operation, or in historical runs, when cycles can typically interleave for much-increased throughput. Cylc is not actually specialized to environmental forecasting, however, and cycling workflows may also be useful in other contexts. In this paper, we describe the origins and major features of Cylc, future plans for the project, and our experience of Open Source development and community engagement.@en

Tactile perception is a complex system, which depends on frictional interactions between skin and counter-body. The contact mechanics of tactile friction is governed by many factors such as the state and properties of skin and counter-body. In order to discover the connection between perception and tactile friction on textured stainless steel sheets, both perception experiments (subjective) and tactile friction measurements (objective) were performed in this research. The perception experiments were carried out by using a panel test method to identify the perceived roughness, perceived stickiness and comfort level from the participants. For the friction experiments, tactile friction was measured by a multi-axis force/torque transducer in vivo. The perceived stickiness was illustrated as an effective subjective stimulus, which has a negative correlation to the comfort perception. No significant evidence was revealed to the connection between the perceived roughness and comfort perception, and this relationship may be influenced by the participants’ individual experience, gender and moisture level of skin. Furthermore, the kinetic tactile friction was concluded as an objective stimulus to the comfort perception with a negative correlation.

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This review gives a concise introduction to the state-of-art techniques used for surface texturing, e.g., wet etching, plasma etching, laser surface texturing (LST), 3D printing, etc. In order to fabricate deterministic textures with the desired geometric structures and scales, the innovative texturing technologies are developed and extended. Such texturing technology is an emerging frontier with revolutionary impact in industrial and scientific fields. With the help of the latest fabrication technologies, surface textures are scaling down and more complex deterministic patterns may be fabricated with desired functions, e.g., lotus effect (hydrophobic), gecko feet (adhesive), haptic tactile, etc. The objective of this review is to explore the surface texturing technology and its contributions to the applications.

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