Elastohydrodynamic lubrication of cylinders with soft incompressible coatings firmly bonded to the substrate

Abstract

A numerical solution to the inverse elastohydrodynamic lubrication problem of a cylindrical line contact involving one- or two-sided incompressible coatings fully bonded to the substrate is presented. Instead of using a full elasticity solution, a thin layer approximation for the surface displacement is adopted for a low ratio of the layer thickness to the contact half width. The outlet point is assumed to coincide with the end of the dry contact and the condition of zero fluid pressure gradient at the outlet is released. For the dry contact width much larger than the layer thickness the Meijers asymptotic value is taken. An analytical central film thickness formula is given that agrees well for this case with the values obtained from the full solution.