Reply to the Comment by Scott Bair, Philippe Vergne, Punit Kumar, Gerhard Poll, Ivan Krupka, Martin Hartl, Wassim Habchi, Roland Larson on “History, Origins and Prediction of Elastohydrodynamic Friction” by Spikes and Jie in Tribology Letters

Abstract

Bair, accompanied by some of his past co-authors, has commented on our paper “History, Origins and Prediction of Elastohydrodynamic Friction”. We believe that our paper presents a balanced summary of current understanding of EHD friction, its origins and prediction. However, Bair et al. appear to have chosen to interpret our paper as an assault on the high-stress viscometric approach that Bair has championed for some years and also as an espousal of the Eyring model of rheology which he has consistently denigrated over the same period. To combat this perceived assault, they suggest that our paper somehow misrepresents the literature and indeed contains numerous misstatements of fact and misrepresentations by omission. Our reply refutes this.