Nonlinearity of Material Loss Versus the Wearing Force

In contrast to the description provided by Archard’s equation, material loss under a wearing force is more or less nonlinear. Excluding the wear regime transition and other possible factors such as oxidation, this nonlinear relationship may result from variations in the mechanical behavior of materials such as strain hardening. Although this is a classic topic, relevant issues have still not been fully clarified or quantified. Better understanding of the nonlinearity would help achieve good control of the wear of materials, especially surface wear encountered in nano/microsystems, which are sensitive to surface damage or deterioration. In this study, we investigated the nonlinearity of material loss versus wearing force, without involving the wear regime transition, for three alloys, Al5182 (fcc), AZ31B alloy (hcp), and steel (bcc). An attempt is made to study this phenomenon in depth and extract additional information on the material behavior from the nonlinearity.