Variational approach to the analysis of steady‐state thermo‐elastic wear regimes

Abstract

AbstractA transient wear process on frictional interface of two thermo‐elastic bodies in a relative steady sliding motion induces shape evolution of contact interface and tends to a steady state for which the wear process occurs at fixed contact stress and strain distribution. The temperature field generated by frictional and wear dissipation on the contact surface is assumed to reach a steady state. This state is assumed to correspond to minimum of the wear dissipation power and the temperature field corresponds to maximum of the heat entropy production. The stationarity conditions of the response functionals provide the contact pressure distribution and the corresponding temperature field. The present approach extends the authors previous analyses of optimal or steady‐state contact shapes by accounting for coupled wear and thermal distortion effects.The wear rule is assumed as a non‐linear relation of wear rate to shear stress and relative sliding velocity. The analysis of disk and drum brakes is presented with account for thermal distortion effect. It is shown that the contact shape in a steady thermo‐elastic state essentially differs from that specified for mechanical loading with neglect of thermal effects. The thermal instability regimes are not considered in the paper. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.