Breakdown of Archard law due to transition of wear mechanism from plasticity to fracture

Widely used to quantify material wear, the Archard wear law was derived from the asperity flattening model. However, the flattening model is so idealized that it cannot properly represent the real situation with general interlocked asperities, where asperity plowing dominates the wear instead of shearing flattened asperity. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we discussed if Archard law can hold during plowing wear of interlocked interface. Our results indicated Archard law breaks down when fracture dominates the wear. Furthermore, increasing interfacial adhesion or decreasing material ductility changes the dominant wear factor from plasticity to fracture. Finally, we proposed a criterion to determine when Archard wear law will break down and discussed the proposed criterion for real materials.