A finite element (FE) model combining submodel technique is presented for the adhesive wear in elastic–plastic spherical contact. It consists of a global model, showing the potential location of fracture under combined normal and tangential loading, and a refined mesh submodel covering only the region near the potential fracture. This allows to describe the morphology of wear particle more accurately than that in a previously developed model by the authors. A range of normal loading is studied to show its effect on the shape and volume of wear particles. Two main regimes of mild and severe wear (along with a relatively narrow transition region between them) are found, which show almost linear and power-law dependency of wear rate on normal loading, respectively. Such behavior agrees with published experimental observations. However, the transition region is theoretically predicted here for the first time.

Theoretical modeling of surface texturing in hydrodynamic lubrication is a necessary first step to obtain favorable effect of the texturing. This invited review presents a comprehensive summary of the modeling of several basic applications that was done mostly by the author’s group at Technion and published in the relevant literature.