Elastohydrodynamic lubrication of line contacts

Abstract

Elastohydrodynamic film thickness measurements for rolling line contact under fully flooded and starved conditions have been made using optical interferometry. From the results it was found that the film shape at the end of the roller becomes more parallel as lubricant starvation increases. Two main regions of starvation have been studied, namely progressive and catastrophic regions of lubricant starvation. Furthermore, it was found that the severity of conditions within the hertzian contact increases rapidly as m decreases and dry contact conditions are approached. It has been possible to express the dimensionless inlet distance for catastrophic and progressive lubricant starvation conditions respectively as m cs−1 = 0.964 [( R b) 2 H 0] 2 3 m ps−1 = 2.818 [( R b) 2 H 0] 2 3 It has been concluded that the experimental dimensionless central and minimum film thicknesses under starvation conditions can be written respectively as H 0 s = H 0 m−1 m∗-−1 0.17 H min s = H min m−1 m∗-−1 0.11