A general approach to numerically simulating wear in rollingand sliding contacts is presented in this thesis. A simulationscheme is developed that calculates the wear at a detailedlevel. The removal of material follows Archard’s wear law,which states that the reduction of volume is linearlyproportional to the sliding distance, the normal load and thewear coefficient. The target application is the wheel-railcontact. Careful attention is paid to stress properties in the normaldirection of the contact. A Winkler method is used to calculatethe normal pressure. The model is calibrated either withresults from Finite Element simulations (which can include aplastic material model) or a linear-elastic contact model. Thetangential tractions and the sliding distances are calculatedusing a method that incorporates the effect of rigid bodymotion and tangential deformations in the contact zone.Kalker’s Fastsim code is used to validate the tangentialcalculation method. Results of three different sorts ofexperiments (full-scale, pin-on-disc and disc-on-disc) wereused to establish the wear and friction coefficients underdifferent operating conditions. The experimental results show that the sliding velocity andcontact pressure in the contact situation strongly influencethe wear coefficient. For the disc-on-disc simulation, therewas good agreement between experimental results and thesimulation in terms of wear and rolling friction underdifferent operating conditions. Good agreement was alsoobtained in regard to form change of the rollers. In thefull-scale simulations, a two-point contact was analysed wherethe differences between the contacts on rail-head to wheeltread and rail edge to wheel flange can be attributed primarilyto the relative velocity differences in regard to bothmagnitude and direction. Good qualitative agreement was foundbetween the simulated wear rate and the full-scale test resultsat different contact conditions. <b>Keywords:</b>railway rail, disc-on-disc, pin-on-disc,Archard, wear simulation, Winkler, rolling, sliding

<p>A general approach to numerically simulating wear in rollingand sliding contacts is presented in this thesis. A simulationscheme is developed that calculates the wear at a detailedlevel. The removal of material follows Archard’s wear law,which states that the reduction of volume is linearlyproportional to the sliding distance, the normal load and thewear coefficient. The target application is the wheel-railcontact.</p><p>Careful attention is paid to stress properties in the normaldirection of the contact. A Winkler method is used to calculatethe normal pressure. The model is calibrated either withresults from Finite Element simulations (which can include aplastic material model) or a linear-elastic contact model. Thetangential tractions and the sliding distances are calculatedusing a method that incorporates the effect of rigid bodymotion and tangential deformations in the contact zone.Kalker’s Fastsim code is used to validate the tangentialcalculation method. Results of three different sorts ofexperiments (full-scale, pin-on-disc and disc-on-disc) wereused to establish the wear and friction coefficients underdifferent operating conditions.</p><p>The experimental results show that the sliding velocity andcontact pressure in the contact situation strongly influencethe wear coefficient. For the disc-on-disc simulation, therewas good agreement between experimental results and thesimulation in terms of wear and rolling friction underdifferent operating conditions. Good agreement was alsoobtained in regard to form change of the rollers. In thefull-scale simulations, a two-point contact was analysed wherethe differences between the contacts on rail-head to wheeltread and rail edge to wheel flange can be attributed primarilyto the relative velocity differences in regard to bothmagnitude and direction. Good qualitative agreement was foundbetween the simulated wear rate and the full-scale test resultsat different contact conditions.</p><p><b>Keywords:</b>railway rail, disc-on-disc, pin-on-disc,Archard, wear simulation, Winkler, rolling, sliding</p>

Thesis (MScEng (Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / This thesis is concerned with the simulation of the in vivo biomechanical performance of a cervical disc replacement. A representative (averaged) maximum range of motion (ROM), determined by measurement of 10 student participants (5 male, 5 female), was used as head motion input to a simulation model of the cervical spine containing a disc implant at the C5/C6 intervertebral level. Intradiscal pressure, relative applied force on the C5 vertebrae, bending moments and vertebral rotations were recorded. The force and motion components of the results obtained were critically evaluated against the ISO and ASTM experimental protocol standards, probing the representativeness of these standards to the actual in vivo behaviour of the cervical functional spinal unit. Further, the wear resulting from a lifetime (10 million cycles) of the ISO prescribed -and simulation determined input cycles was simulated using a linear wear model with a triangulation technique for volume lost due to wear, and compared to in vitro results in the literature. The inputs used for the wear model were determined from a validated non-linear static contact finite element method (FEM) model. The simulation “chain” shows great potential as a comparative tool for the preexperimental testing of spinal implant designs and may be used with relative success as an alternative to expensive prototype testing.

Wear on total knee replacements is an important criterion for their performance characteristics. Numerical simulations of such wear have seen increasing attention over the last years. They have the potential to be much faster and less expensive than the in vitro tests in use today. While it is unlikely that in silico tests will replace actual physical tests in the foreseeable future, a judicious combination of both approaches can help making both implant design and pre-clinical testing quicker and more cost-effective. The challenge today for the design of simulation methods is to obtain results that convey quantitative information and to do so quickly and reliably. This involves the choice of mathematical models as well as the numerical tools used to solve them. The correctness of the choice can only be validated by comparing with experimental results. In this article, we present finite element simulations of the wear in total knee replacements during the gait cycle standardized in the ISO 14243-1 document, used for compliance testing in several countries. As the ISO 14243-1 standard is precisely defined and publicly available, it can serve as an excellent benchmark for comparison of wear simulation methods. We use comparatively simple wear and material models, but we solve them using a new wear algorithm that combines extrapolation of the geometry changes with a contact algorithm based on nonsmooth multigrid ideas. The contact algorithm works without Lagrange multipliers and penalty parameters, achieving unparalleled stability and efficiency. We compare our simulation results with the experimental data from physical tests using two different actual total knee replacements. Even though the model is simple, we can predict the total mass loss due to wear after 5-million gait cycles, and we observe a good match between the wear patterns seen in experiments and our simulation results. When compared with a state-of-the-art penalty-based solver for the same model, we measure a roughly fivefold increase of execution speed.