To a large extent, the functionality and comfort experienced during the use of everyday products, such as apparel, household appliances and sports equipment, are determined by the frictional behaviour of contact that occurs with the skin. For product engineers who aim to control and optimize the sensorial properties of a product surface interacting with the skin, it is essential to understand this frictional behaviour. This involves the study of local friction behaviour at the scale of the surface roughness.
In this work a mechanistic approach was adopted in which analytical models from contact mechanics theory were used to develop a model which describes the tactile friction behaviour against the human fingerpad as a function of asperity geometry and operational conditions.