Nanolayer in brush collector contact under Joule heating

There has been little research into the contact areas between electric brushes and collectors during sliding interactions due to the difficulty of observing them. A layer of nanosized wear particles forms on the brush contact due to stochastic interactions between the surfaces that give the layer a mottled/speckled structure. This causes the output signal current or voltage to fluctuate. Taking a new approach, we investigate different polyhedral nanoparticle shapes, considering each particle to be enclosed in a bounding cube. Here we focus on Joule's first law and assume that the particles are flattened due to electric currents, leading to Joule heating and hence temperature changes. Our results show that the degree of wear particle dispersion has a significant effect on the wear rate and electrical contact durability.