Numerical analysis of fretting wear in lateral contact of sphere/sphere

The fretting wear characteristics of spherical/spherical lateral contacts under different load conditions, contact angles, and the number of fretting cycles are studied. A spherical/spherical lateral fretting wear model is established in ABAQUS software. A UMESHMOTION subroutine for spherical/spherical contact models is written to simulate the fretting wear based on the energy model and the Fortran language. The results show that as the load increases, the contact width increases significantly and the wear depth decreases. It is also found that the rate of change of the wear depth gradually increases in the central portion of the contact area, and is relatively smooth in the contact edge portion. An increase in the magnitude of the moving load causes a small increase in the contact width and a significant increase in the wear depth. The rate of increase of the wear depth at the edge of the contact area gradually increases and the rate of increase of the wear depth at the center of the contact area changes linearly. As the contact angle increases, the contact form gradually changes to a positive contact. Meanwhile, the wear depth variation shifted from a "U" shape to a "W" shape, which caused the wear depth to decrease significantly at the contact center and eventually approach zero as the adhesive area appeared. In addition, with an increase in the number of fretting cycles, the wear depth was almost unchanged at the contact center portion but significantly increased at the edge portion.