On the correlation between wear and entropy in dry sliding contact

Irreversible thermodynamic theory is employed to study the rate of wear as a degradation process in a dry sliding system. It is shown that the wear rate is linearly related to the entropy flow rate. The linear correlation between rates of wear and entropy is verified experimentally for a pair of materials in dry sliding. Degradation coefficient is obtained and a simple approach is proposed for prediction of wear in dry sliding configuration.