Diffusion as a model of formation and development of surface topography

Abstract

Changes of surface topography in tribological systems are due to inelastic processes as plastic deformation, detaching of wear particles and their reintegration into the surfaces. Due to these processes, the material particles are transported either along a surface or from one tribological partner to the other. Both processes are due to random interactions between surface asperities and are stochastic processes. The stochastic mass transfer between the surfaces is interpreted and described in the paper as a random deposition, the transport along a surface as a `diffusion' processes with some effective diffusion coefficient. We consider the development of the surface topography due to the described two kinds of random processes. There exist some stationary (in statistical sense) random surface topography with a power spectrum (spectral density) typical for many real frictional surfaces. The parameters of the model can either be obtained from comparison with measured topography or extracted from simulations at a lower space scale. The proposed mass transport model further allows to determine the wear rate in the system.