In this investigation an approach to abrasion erosion prediction is developed with consideration of cutting and deformation mechanisms using the discrete element method (DEM). Erosion rate is divided into two parts, cutting and deformation, which are related to the indentation sizes that are predicted by DEM. Empirical coefficients, of course, are introduced to establish the relevance between erosion rate and indentation volume. The proposed model is validated against experiments and results show the model accurately predicts abrasive erosion, especially for the maximum erosion angle. Furthermore, empirical coefficients are deemed to have more associations with hardness ratio H, and their relevance and influence on erosion are discussed. Cutting removal has a 2.0-2.7 power-law relation with particle velocity and deformation damage removal has a 2.8 power-law relation for (H) over tilde < 0.15, decreasing for <(H)over tilde> > 0.15. Finally, the universal correlation with empirical coefficients is integrated to the proposed model, which makes advances in the industrial application. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.