On the Prediction of Transient Wear

During the running-in process, a friction pair experiences drastic evolution in many of its tribological parameters, such as surface roughness, wear rate, and coefficient of friction until steady-state is attained. In this paper, we present a model for predicting the behavior of the running-in process. Specifically, we determine a general relationship between the wear loss and surface roughness during the running-in stage and test the validity of its prediction of wear rate by comparing to available experimental results. We show, by using a dimensional analysis and applying the Buckingham Pi theorem, that there exists a linear relationship between the transient dimensionless wear, the dimensionless initial surface roughness, and dimensionless running-in time.