Asperity Creep Under Constant Force

In Chap. 3, the creep laws for creep in asperities under constant force boundary conditions (i.e. area increase due to sink-in) are presented. These empirical laws can be used not only for analyzing friction, but are of more general value. For example, the behavior of spherical solder connectors (ball grids) under stress and thermal cycling is a long-standing problem in electronics, and creep is believed to play a decisive role. Also, our understanding of the process of sintering could potentially profit from this kind of model [see for example Balluffi et al. (Kinetics of Materials. Wiley, Hoboken, 2005), Chap. 16 or Dutton et al. (J. Am. Ceram. Soc. 75:2146-2154, 2005)].