Topography-driven modeling of layer-resolved wear evolution based on boundary element contact analysis

Surface topography governs the real contact behavior during wear. Peak-valley topography and load-bearing material distribution further control the evolution of surface damage. This study proposes a topography-driven wear modeling approach based on measured rough surfaces. Under the half-space assumption, the boundary element method (BEM) is employed to compute the contact pressure, displacement, and interfacial gap fields over the discretized rough interface. The incremental geometric update procedure driven by the resolved contact state is then applied to simulate progressive surface wear. Sliding wear experiments with different initial roughness levels are conducted to investigate wear mechanisms. The three-layer method based on the Abbott-Firestone curve (AFC-3L) is employed to analyze layer-resolved topography evolution. The results show that the model predictions capture the experimental trends of wear response and layer-resolved topography evolution. The wear process proceeds sequentially through asperity truncation, core-layer reconstruction, and valley-layer involvement, with wear depth strongly dependent on the initial surface roughness.