Wear kinetics theory and its potential application to assessment of wear of machine parts

Wear is a highly complex process which can be described from many points of view. One of them is the kinetics of material loss. In this paper a wear kinetics theory is formulated. Then a procedure for determining wear progress from experimental data is presented. The theory and the procedure cover not only the mass loss process, but also the incubation period. An example for real machinery – the diesel engine fuel system's components – is provided, demonstrating the universality of the proposed theory.