Surface topography has a significant influence on the friction behaviour in lubricated contacts. During running-in, the surface topography is continuously changed. The surface structure influences the contact stiffness (asperity contact pressure) as well as the microhydrodynamics (flow factors). In this study, different models for wear simulation of real rough surfaces were created in Matlab© (MathWorks, Natick, MA) and Abaqus© (ABAQUS Inc., Palo Alto, CA, USA) using the Usersubroutine Umeshmotion. The arithmetic mean height Sa(wh), the maximum height Sz(wh), as well as the asperity contact pressure pasp(h,wh) as a function of the wear height (wh) are used to characterise the surface for the respective wear state. The surface characteristics obtained from
the simulations are validated with parameters from experiments. The aim of this study was to create a simulation methodology for mapping surface development during the running-in process. The results show, that the qualitative course of the surface parameters can be reproduced with the applied simulation methodology. Compared to the experiments, the rough surfaces are flattened faster. By adapting the simulation results in postprocessing, good agreements with the experiments can be achieved.