Mesoscopic scale simulation and wear investigation of self-lubricating fabric liner based on representative volume element

Abstract

As the self-lubricating layer of self-lubricating spherical plain bearings, fabric liner shows obvious heterogeneous anisotropic characteristics, so it is a technical difficulty to predict its wear properties. In this paper, the continuous wear of self-lubricating fabric liner was simulated based on the mesoscopic scale wear model. The macroscopic wear properties of the fabric liner were characterized by establishing a representative volume element, and subsequently imposing periodic boundary restrictions on periodic surfaces. In order to avoid excessive mesh distortion, voxel grids meshing method was used, and then continuous wear of the heterogeneous material was realized by adjusting node coordinates and combining nodes. Detailed comparison between simulation prediction results and wear test data of fabric liner was made. The good correlation of the results confirmed that the mesoscopic scale wear model could be used in accurately predict the tribological performance of fabric composite.