Mild Wear Prediction of Boundary-Lubricated Contacts

In this paper, a wear model is introduced for the mild wear present in boundary-lubricated systems protected by additive-rich lubricants. The model is based on the hypothesis that the mild wear is mainly originating from the removal of the sacrificial layer formed by a chemical reaction between the base material and the additive packages present in the lubricant. By removing a part of this layer, the chemical balance of the system is disturbed and the system will try to restore the balance for which it uses base material. In this study, mechanical properties reported throughout literature are included into the wear model based on observed phenomena for this type of systems. The model is validated by model experiments and the results are in very good agreement, suggesting that the model is able to simulate wear having a predictive nature rather than on empirical-based relationships as Archard’s linear wear model. Also a proposal is made to include the transition from mild to severe wear into the model creating a complete wear map.