This study employs the energy-dissipation method to analyze the tribological behaviors of diamond-like carbon (DLC) films through molecular dynamics simulation. It is found that at small load and sliding velocity, the variation trend of average friction force is only dependent on the number of interface bonds (or contact area). However, at large load and sliding velocity, the friction mechanism is not only related to the number of interface bonds but also related to the presence of the transfer layer. The elastic-plastic deformation mainly occurs in the early sliding stage, and a part of the stored elastic potential energy is dissipated by plastic potential energy or internal frictional heat. After the sliding stabilization, over 95% of the total frictional energy is dissipated by thermal conduction, and the rest is mostly dissipated by wear. The increase in load, velocity, and temperature cause more frictional energy dissipated by elastic-plastic deformation, atomic motion, and elastic deformation instead of thermal conduction, respectively. Finally, the wear rate obtained in this work is the same order of magnitude as the experiment. Generally, this work provides an effective atomic-scale method to comprehensively analyze the microscopic wear mechanism of materials.
Keywords: diamond-like carbon; energy-dissipation analysis; molecular dynamics simulation; wear estimation.