Wear of MoS2 layer in a ball-on-disk test: experiments and finite element modeling

In the paper, experimental and numerical results of the wear of a molybdenum disulfide coated on a titanium alloy disk are reported. The coating is in contact with a sapphire ball. The experiments are conducted for ambient temperatures varying from 20 to 350 \(^\circ \) ${}^{\circ }$ C. The results indicate that the wear profile becomes increasingly pronounced at the growth of the temperature up to 350 \(^\circ \) ${}^{\circ }$ C. A numerical model is proposed to describe the results of the experiment. The central assumption is the thermal steady state forming in the interface area. The resulting stress field serves as input for the simulation of wear. A good agreement can be observed between the experimental findings and the FE calculations.