Triggering Frictional Slip by Mechanical Vibrations

We study the slippage of a tribological system of particles confined between a horizontally driven top plate and a vertically oscillating bottom plate. As shown in a recent article (Capozza et al., Phys Rev Lett 103:085502, 2009), tiny vibrations, when applied in a suitable range of frequencies, may suppress the high dissipative stick-slip dynamics reducing drastically the lateral friction force. Here, we generalize and prove the robustness of the results against the effect of quenched disorder in the confining substrates and the presence of adhesive and cohesive forces at the interface. The observed phenomenology is shown to hold true by moving from the previously considered two dimensional modeling to a more realistic three dimensional geometry. A detailed analysis is devoted to the case of short vibration pulses. These findings are relevant for nanoscale mechanics and in the context of earthquake or avalanches triggering.