In this study, the effect of adhesion on material removal is numerically investigated at the nanoscale level. In this regard, Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations are conducted to distinguish the contribution of adhesive and abrasive wear mechanisms during a scratching process in terms of the degree of interfacial adhesion and scratching depth. The numerical model simulates the scratching of a flat workpiece made of a single crystalline aluminum using a rigid conical indenter with a blunted spherical tip at four different indentation depths (i.e. 0, 3, 7, and 10 Å). The classical Leonard-Jones interatomic potential is used to mimic the degree of adhesion by varying the adhesion parameter between 5–70% of the aluminum bonding energy. It is shown that, at shallow scratching depths, the contribution of adhesive work to the frictional work is much larger than the ploughing work. On the contrary, the ratio of adhesive to ploughing work reduces by increasing the scratching depth.