Mild microscopic wear in the boundary lubrication regime

The transition from a mild wear situation to a severe (adhesive) wear situation is of great interest to be able to design highly loaded concentrated contacts operating in the boundary lubricated regime. In this article a method is described to estimate this transition, based on a thermal criterion. it is stated that if a certain percentage of the contacting asperities transcends a critical temperature which is determined experimentally the transition from mild to severe wear takes place. The theory presented is validated with a model system and the results from experiments are is good agreement with the simulations.