Adhesive Wear Review

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Adhesive Wear Review

Adhesive wear frequently occurs because of shearing at points of contact or asperities that undergo adhesion or cold welding. Shearing occurs through the weakest section, which is not necessarily at the adhesion plane. In many cases, shearing occurs in the softer material, but such a comparison is based on shear tests of relatively large pure samples. The adhesion junctions, on the other hand, are very small spots of weakness or impurity that would be insignificant in a large specimen but in practice may be sufficient to permit shearing through the harder material. In some instances the wearing surfaces of materials with different hardness can contain traces of material from the other face. Theoretically, this type of wear does not remove material but merely transfers it between wearing surfaces. However, the transferred material is often loosely deposited and eventually flakes away in microscopic particles; these, in turn, cause wear.