Efficient Steady-State Computation for Wear of Multimaterial Composites

Traditionally, iterative schemes have been used to predict evolving material profiles under abrasive wear. In this work, more efficient continuous formulations are presented for predicting the wear of tribological systems. Following previous work, the formulation is based on a two parameter elastic Pasternak foundation model. It is considered as a simplified framework to analyze the wear of multimaterial surfaces. It is shown that the evolving wear profile is also the solution of a parabolic partial differential equation (PDE). The wearing profile is proven to converge to a steady-state that propagates with constant wear rate. A relationship between this velocity and the inverse rule of mixtures or harmonic mean for composites is derived. For cases where only the final steady-state profile is of interest, it is shown that the steady-state profile can be accurately and directly determined by solving a simple elliptic differential system-thus avoiding iterative schemes altogether. Stability analysis is performed to identify conditions under which an iterative scheme can provide accurate predictions and several comparisons between iterative and the proposed formulation are made. Prospects of the new continuous wear formulation and steady-state characterization are discussed for advanced optimization, design, manufacturing, and control applications.