Effects of Surface Roughness and Additives in Lubrication: Generalized Reynolds Equation and its Application to Elastohydrodynamic Film

Abstract

To study the effects of surface roughness and additives in lubrication, a generalized form of Reynolds equation is derived by taking into account the roughness interaction zones adjacent to the moving rough surfaces as sparsely porous matrices and purely hydrodynamic film of micropolar fluid characterizing the lubricant with additives. A particular, one-dimensional form of this equation is used to study these effects on the elastohydrodynamic (EHD) minimum film thickness at the inlet, between two rough rollers. It is shown that for the low permeability of the roughness zone, the EHD film thickness increases as the mean height of the asperities increases, whereas for the high permeability it decreases. The EHD film thickness is also found to increase with the concentration of the additives and the molecular size of the particles. These results are in conformity at least qualitatively, with various experimental and theoretical investigations, cited in the paper.