Theory of powdery rubber wear.

Rubber wear typically involves the removal of small rubber particles from the rubber surface. On surfaces with not too sharp roughness, e.g. most road surfaces, this involves (slow) crack propagation. In this paper I shall present a theory of mild rubber wear. I shall derive the distribution of wear particle sizes Φ(D), which is in excellent agreement with experiment. I shall also show that the calculated wear rate is consistent with experimental data for tire tread block wear.