Finite element based simulation of dry sliding wear

In order to predict wear and eventually the life-span of complex mechanical systems, several hundred thousand operating cycles have to be simulated. Therefore, a finite element (FE) post-processor is the optimum choice, considering the computational expense. A wear simulation approach based on Archard's wear law is implemented in an FE post-processor that works in association with a commercial FE package, ABAQUS, for solving the general deformable-deformable contact problem. Local wear is computed and then integrated over the sliding distance using the Euler integration scheme. The wear simulation tool works in a loop and performs a series of static FE-simulations with updated surface geometries to get a realistic contact pressure distribution on the contacting surfaces. It will be demonstrated that this efficient approach can simulate wear on both two-dimensional and three-dimensional surface topologies. The wear on both the interacting surfaces is computed using the contact pressure distribution from a two-dimensional or three-dimensional simulation, depending on the case. After every wear step the geometry is re-meshed to correct the deformed mesh due to wear, thus ensuring a fairly uniform mesh for further processing. The importance and suitability of such a wear simulation tool will be enunciated in this paper.