Simulation of sliding wear based on finite element method and its application to wear prediction of link pivot joint

A sliding wear simulation approach based on Archard's wear law was proposed, in which the progressive accumulation of wear in metal pin was simulated with ANSYS software. Removal of material caused by wear was implemented by moving boundary nodes. Possible mesh distortion due to repositioning boundary nodes was settled using boundary displacement method from structural shape optimization. Through discretizing wear process into wear simulation step, total wear volume was calculated using Euler integration scheme. Two block-on-ring experiments were performed to validate above wear prediction method. Then wear problem of pin pivot joint in lifting system was analyzed and predicted with error of 12%. Results show that the complex nonlinear wear process can be simulated with a series of discrete quasi static models based on FEM, and the method proposed can be as an available tool to predict wear problems for engineering.