ArchardGesetz

ArchardGesetz (Archard's law) is an empirical relation in tribology that describes the volume of material removed by adhesive wear during sliding contact. Proposed by J. F. Archard in 1953, the law expresses wear volume V as proportional to the normal load F and the sliding distance s, and inversely proportional to the hardness H of the softer contacting material: V = k · (F · s) / H. The dimensionless factor k, known as the wear coefficient, encapsulates contact geometry, material pairing, lubrication state and environmental conditions.

The simplicity of the Archard relation makes it widely used for first-order wear predictions in engineering design, component lifetime estimation and numerical simulations. Typical orders of magnitude for k vary widely (roughly 10^−8 to 10^−2) depending on whether wear is mild or severe and on experimental setup. Because k is empirical, Archard's law is often calibrated against laboratory wear tests for a given material pair and operating regime.

Limitations include assumptions of steady-state adhesive wear, dominance of plastic deformation at asperity contacts, and scale independence. It does not explicitly account for third-body abrasion, chemical degradation, or complex surface topography, and may be inaccurate for lubricated, corrosive or fatigue-dominated wear. Extensions and alternative models combine Archard’s framework with contact mechanics, energy-balance approaches or population models of asperity interactions to capture a broader range of wear phenomena. The Archard relation remains a foundational concept in tribology for its intuitive form and practical utility.