A computational study of frictional heating and energy conversion during sliding processes

A dynamic wear model was applied to simulate sliding processes with accounting for frictional heating. In this model, a sliding system includes three components: holder, slider, and counter block. The components are discretized and mapped onto discrete lattices. Each lattice site represents a small volume of the material involved, which may move under the influence of external contact force and the interaction between the site and its adjacent sites, governed by Newton's law of motion. The site-site interaction is a function of the mechanical properties of the material. Following the first law of thermodynamics, changes in frictional heat, strain energy, and fracture energy during sliding were analyzed. It was demonstrated that the temperature rise during sliding resulted not only from the surface friction but also from internal friction related to plastic deformation and strain rate. In order to better understand the mechanism responsible for the temperature variation during a sliding process, different sliding processes were simulated and the temperature distribution and its relation with the surface roughness were also studied. Consistency between the modeling and previous experimental and theoretical studies was found. For fundamental understanding of the energy conversion and temperature rise during a sliding process, fractions of different forms of energy were evaluated under different sliding friction conditions.