A boundary element formulation for wear modeling on 3D contact and rolling-contact problems

The present work shows a new numerical treatment for wear simulation on 3D contact and rolling-contact problems. This formulation is based on the boundary element method (BEM) for computing the elastic influence coefficients and on projection functions over the augmented Lagrangian for contact restrictions fulfillment. The constitutive equations of the potential contact zone are Signorini’s contact conditions, Coulomb’s law of friction and Holm–Archard’s law of wear. The proposed methodology is applied to predict wear on different contact and rolling-contact problems. Results are validated with numerical solutions and semi-analytical models presented in the literature. The BEM considers only the degrees of freedom involved on these kind of problems (those on the solids surfaces), reducing the number of unknowns and obtaining a very good approximation on contact tractions using a low number of elements. Together with the formulation, an acceleration strategy is presented allowing to reduce the times of resolution.