Driven dynamics of simplified tribological models

Over the last decade, remarkable developments in nanotechnology, notably the use of atomic and friction force microscopes (AFM/FFM), the surface-force apparatus (SFA) and the quartz-crystal microbalance (QCM), have provided the possibility to build experimental devices able to perform analysis on well-characterized materials at the nano- and microscale. Simultaneously, tremendous advances in computing hardware and methodology (molecular dynamics techniques and ab initio calculations) have dramatically increased the ability of theoreticians to simulate tribological processes, supplying very detailed information on the atomic scale for realistic sliding systems. This acceleration in experiments and computations, leading often to very detailed yet complex data, has deeply stimulated the search, rediscovery and implementation of simpler mathematical models such as the generalized Frenkel-Kontorova and Tomlinson models, capable of describing and interpreting, in a more immediate way, the essential physics involved in nonlinear sliding phenomena.