Abstract: Pin-on-disc wear experiments involve complicated coupled heat transfer, stress and wear phenomenon. Based on generalised Archard wear model and commercial finite element analysis(FEA) software ABAQUS, a sequentially coupled analysis(SCA) method for simulating the coupled multi-fields problem is developed. The SCA method is applicable to 3-dimensional transient dry sliding problems. In SCA, the temperature field is simulated first by transient heat transfer procedure, after which the coupled contact and wear problem between the contact interface is analysed under the influence of thermal load caused by the precalculated temperature. This method also includes the influence of temperature on mechanical and thermal property of mating materials, and the dependency of wear coefficient and friction coefficient on temperature and contact pressure is involved as well. Thermal boundary conditions such as frictional heating, contact conductance, forced and natural convection and radiation are included in the heat transfer analysis. A pin-on-disc wear experiment is simulated by SCA method to obtain the evolution of temperature field, contact pressure and wear. The FEA result is in good accordance with the measured one, and illuminates the influence of temperature field on contact and wear behaviour between the pin and disc interface.

Key words: finite element, pin-on-disc wear experiments, stress, temperature field, wear