Wear patterns and laws of wear – a review

Wear is a process of gradual removal of a material from surfaces of solids subject to contact and sliding. Damages of contact surfaces are results of wear. They can have various patterns (abrasion, fatigue, ploughing, corrugation, erosion and cavitation). The results of abrasive wear are identified as irreversible changes in body contours and as evolutions of gaps between contacting solids. The wear depth profile of a surface is a useful measure of the removed material. The definition of the gap between contacting bodies takes into account deformations of bodies and evolutions of wear profiles. The wear depth can be estimated with the aid of wear laws. Derived in this study, constitutive equations of anisotropic wear are extensions of the Archard law of wear. The equations describe abrasion of materials with microstructures. The illustrative example demonstrates calculations of the abraded mass and temperatures in pin-on-disc test rig.