Does the frictional force increase as the normal force increases, or does the coefficient of friction get smaller in value?
[Physics] What happens to the coefficient of friction as the normal force increases
classical-mechanicsfriction
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I am not an expert in such fields, but I'll give you an overview of how I've learnt it.
The main point to realize is that, on a microscopic scale, the surfaces we initially thought of as "smooth" contain actually a great many irregular protuberances.
Coming back to the surface area between the two objects, one must carefully distinguish between the microscopic area of contact and the macroscopic upon which the friction force is independent, meaning they can be lying on top of each other with their larger cross sections or their smaller parts, it will not matter. Of course this seems surprising at first because friction results from adhesion, so one might expect the friction force to be greater when objects slide on their larger sides, because the contact area is larger. However, what determines the amount of adhesion is not the macroscopic contact area, but the microscopic contact area, and the latter is pretty much independent of whether the objects lie on a large face or on a small face.
Key idea is that the normal force puts pressure on the protuberances of one surface against those of the other which causes the protuberances/junctions to undergo a certain flattening (elastic deformation e.g.), and this increases the effective area of contact between the "rough" parts (before, you can imagine that only the tip points where actually bonding), as illustrated in these two pictures:
Second picture: larger effective area of contact or in other words higher number of contact points between the protuberances, also as pointed out by Jim.
To conclude, we now can tell that for large macroscopic contact areas, the number of protuberances in contact is larger but since the normal force is distributed over all of them, their deformations are less important (smaller effective microscopic area), whereas the opposite will hold for smaller macroscopic surfaces, where the deformations are very strong and maximize the contact between the junctions, but their numbers is comparatively lower. All of which explains why macroscopic areas don't matter.
As for larger normal forces, it will increase the deformation of junctions and make the coupling between the surfaces stronger.
In general, smoothing the surface, changing the interaction from sliding to rolling, adding (air) space between the surfaces, and adding lubrication (oil, graphite, teflon, ball bearings, air cushion...) are the most common techniques.
Best Answer
The coefficient of friction should in the majority of cases, remain constant no matter what your normal force is. When you apply a greater normal force, the frictional force increases, and your coefficient of friction stays the same. Here's another way to think about it: because the force of friction is equal to the normal force times the coefficient of friction, we expect (in theory) an increase in friction when the normal force is increased.
One more thing, the coefficient of friction is a property of the materials being "rubbed", and this property usually does not depend on the normal force.