Mechanism of wear and COF variation of vulcanized rubber under changing loads and sliding velocities: Interpretation at the atomic scale

Abstract

This paper focused on wear mechanism of vulcanized rubber under changing loads and sliding velocities, and coefficient of friction (COF) variation induced by friction and wear mechanism at the atomic scale. A self-developed molecular dynamic (MD) model representing classic abrasive wear was built and experiments were also conducted for verification qualitatively. The results show that rubber wear is slighter both at the nanoscale and macroscale with higher sliding velocity and lower load due to lower interface temperature, less probability of adhesion, less contact area and decreasing motion ability of molecular chains. Furthermore, it was verified both by experiment and simulation that with increasing vertical load, friction mechanism leads to lower COF, and wear mechanism leads to greater COF.