On Use of Surface Deformation Models to Predict Tribological Behavior

Friction and, to a greater extent, wear and surface damage from strong intersurface adhesions or plastic flow depend critically on deformation (of bearing materials). These manifestations of tribological behavior also depend on the other physical processes and on chemical processes and how these interact with system variables (including operating variables) and among themselves. Thus, deformation models can be useful for explaining, predicting or correlating tribological behavior only as a part of a model including the other significant processes for a particular wear regime(s).