Tribological behavior anisotropy in sliding interaction of asperities on single-crystal α-iron: A quasi-continuum study

Fundamental understanding of interfacial phenomena in asperity interactions at the nanoscale is prompted by advances in tribology. In this work, we established a multiscale model of asperity asperity sliding interaction to study the effects of both crystalline anisotropy and crystallographic orientation matching degree on the tribological behavior. Asperity pairs in cases of both mismatched and matched crystallographic orientations were considered. The results revealed that the crystallographic orientation and its matching degree had a tremendous influence on tribological characteristics. The combination effects of internal defect generation and interfacial adhesion anisotropies were found to be responsible for the anisotropic tribological properties. Wear mechanism for the matched case behaved as adhesion wear, whereas wear mechanism for the mismatched case was identified as abrasive wear.