Tribology of Wet Hair

This project aims at studying the detailed interactions responsible for wet friction in hair-to-hair contacts. Molecular models will describe the interactions between agglomerates formed between hair bundles, starting by capturing the hair-coacervates-hair interactions in conditions which are representative of combing conditions. Both Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) simulations of confined systems and more accurate Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations will be used for this purpose, with the latter specifically being employed to explore fundamental mechanisms that explain detailed interactions between the molecular species under investigation.
Professor Dini and his team are ideally placed to tackle this problem given their experience with studying tribological interactions across the scales, with focus recently being placed on the importance of molecular interactions in determining the macroscopic behavior of tribological systems (see e.g. Refs. [1-4]. P&G has a successful track record of working with Prof. Dini for modelling lubrication in the shave process.
The modelling work proposed here is linked to ongoing C&D efforts sponsored by Hair Care M&S and jointly with Corporate Functions Analytical to model the phase chemistry of coacervate phases (Sing, U. Illinois - see e.g. Ref. [5]) and a measurement effort (Ming, Dhinojwala, U. Akron) to provide experimental friction data for calibration and validation.