Finite element analysis and experiments of metal/metal wear in oscillatory contacts

A numerical approach that simulates the progressive accumulation of wear in oscillating metal on metal contacts is proposed. The approach uses a reciprocating pin-on-disk tribometer to measure a wear rate for the material pair of interest. This wear rate is an input to a finite element analysis that simulates a block-on-ring experiment. After the simulation, two block-on-ring experiments were performed with the same materials that were studied in the reciprocating pin-on-disk experiments. The results from the finite element analysis were in close agreement with the block-on-ring experimental results. This approach did not either rely on curve fitting or use the block-on-ring experimental data as model inputs. The finite element analyses were performed by progressively changing nodal coordinates to simulate the removal of material that occurs during surface interaction. The continuous wear propagation was discretized and an extrapolation scheme was used to reduce computational costs of this simulation.