  To prolong lifetime and reduce energy consumption, a thorough understanding
of abrasive wear is essential. The potentially crucial influence of surface
topography intricacies on tribological behavior have been obscured, since
roughness and waviness are often considered simple scalar quantities. Here, the
complete waviness profile of the sliding track was used to shed light on the
influence of surface topography on abrasive wear. Bearing steel pins and disks
were tribologically tested with Al2O3-based slurries as interfacial medium. It
was found that even small surface deviations (albeit minimized and controlled
for) can significantly increase the friction coefficient - up to 91 %. Not only
are frictional fluctuations strongly correlated with the disks' initial
waviness profile, these small fluctuations correlate with unevenly-distributed
high wear.
