Elastic-plastic fracture mechanics and wear

Analysis of the mechanism of sliding wear reveals several similarities to the mechanism of elastic-plastic fracture. Common features include the presence of steep strain gradients and the existence of a region very near the wear surface (or crack tip) where material separation takes place and where the analysis must take microstructural processes into account. The wear mechanism considered is the formation of flakes by the separation of dislocation cell boundaries. The analysis results in a sliding wear analog to Archard's relation; the hardness is replaced by the product of the elastic modulus and the critical strain to convert a cell wall into a microcrack.