Mechanical equipment suffers wear during operation and it is one of the key factors that influences the total cost of maintenance. If we can reduce the wear we will reduce the maintenance cost, extending the equipment life.

As important as the magnitude of the wear, the distribution of the wear in the equipment can highlight the areas which may suffer the most wear; additional protection can be placed in these areas of potential high wear. Sensible placement of wear plates is a need in order to achieve a cost effective design.

In this model a relative approach is used, the wear is produced by material sliding on the equipment surface. Accumulated tangential force is used to investigate the areas subject to wear.

The main focus is on:

• Use of contact force chaining.
• Addition of Custom Properties to the Physics Model.
• Simulation and post-processing using Custom Properties.
• Addition and use of Custom Properties in GPU-API (advanced users only).