On the Applicability of Miner’s Rule to Adhesive Wear

Miner’s rule is a simple relation typically used for assessment of the accumulation of damage and prediction of the remaining useful life of a component subjected to cyclic fatigue stress under variable loading sequence. In this paper, the validity of applying Miner’s rule to adhesive wear problem under variable, sequential loading is investigated. For this purpose, series of pin-on-disk experiments with different material combinations were performed to examine the behavior of adhesive wear subjected to variable loading sequence. The experimental results show that the loading sequence affects the weight loss. Applicability of Archard’s law for variable loading sequence is also investigated. It is shown that in the case of sequential loading, the Archard’s law is incapable of accurately predicting the weight loss. The dissipated power is calculated for all the experiments. It is shown that under the conditions tested for dry friction between steel on steel and steel on brass, the onset of failure occurs when the dissipated power reaches 0.15 and 0.06 W, respectively, regardless of the loading sequence.