Polymer tribology is a fast growing area owing to increasing applications of polymers and polymer composites in industry, transportation, and many other areas of economy. Surface forces are very important for polymer contact, but the real origin of such forces has not been fully investigated. Strong adhesive interaction between polymers leads to an increase in the friction force, and hence, the asperities of the material may be removed to form wear particles or transfer layers on the counterface. The theory of polymer adhesion has not been completely elucidated yet and several models of adhesion have been proposed from the physical or chemical standpoints. This paper is focused on the research efforts on polymer adhesion with emphasis on adhesion mechanisms, which are very important in the analysis of polymer friction and wear.

We review contact mechanics with emphasis on the rheological (time dependent) properties of polymers and their relations to surface roughness, material properties, and friction as well as wear behavior of rubbing polymer surfaces. The main concept of polymer mechanics related to tribology consists of three basic elements involved in friction: deformation resulting in the real area of contact of rough surfaces, contact adhesion, and shear and rupture of materials in the contact during the sliding friction. The results of classical work are included, which addresses the real contact area calculation and the description of adhesion interaction between rough surfaces. A brief review of experimental investigations concerning the surface characterization by means of bearing curves, the intermolecular force interaction using the adhesion parameter, the effect of temperature on the real contact area, the formation of transferred polymer film during friction, and tribological behavior of ultrathin polymer layers are presented and their implications discussed. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014, 131, 39870.

A stochastic model for predicting the evolutions of wear profile and surface height probability density function (PDF) of initial line contacts during running-in under mixed lubrication condition is presented. A numerical approach was developed on the basis of stochastic solution of mixed lubrication, which combined the Patir and Cheng's average flow model for calculation of the hydrodynamic pressure and the Kogut and Etsion's (KE) rough surface contact model for calculation of the asperity contact pressure. The total friction force was assumed to be the sum of the boundary friction at the contact asperities and the integration of viscous shear stress in the hydrodynamic region. The wear depth on the contact region was estimated according to the modified Archard's wear model using the asperity contact pressure. Sugimura's wear model was modified and used to link the wear particle size distribution and the variation of surface height PDF during wear. In the wear process, the variations of profile and surface height PDF of initial line contacts were calculated step by step in time, and the pressure distribution, friction coefficient, and wear rate were updated consequently. The effect of size distribution of wear particles on the wear process was numerically investigated, and the simulation results showed that the lubrication condition in which small wear particles are generated from the asperity contact region is beneficial to reduce friction coefficient and wear rate, and leads to a better steady mixed lubrication condition.