On the commensuration of plastic plowing at the microscale

Abstract Improving the wear properties requires an understanding of the mechanisms during the initial stages of wear. This paper focuses on the transition from static indentation to dynamic wear, i.e. the evolution from stationary to sliding contact. By using single micrometer-sized roughness peaks on copper, cementite and austenitic steel, we observe that the conservation of contact area, elastic recovery, and the front pile-up development are the dominant mechanisms. The elastic recovery leads to an additional contact area at the backside of the asperity. The influence of the crystallographic orientation was found to be negligible during the initial increase in wear depth but significant during the later stages. Moreover, the partial wear depth recovery is observed only in ductile materials.