Kinematics and Lubrication of Camshaft Roller Follower Mechanisms

Abstract

This study provides a theoretical treatment of the lubrication of a camshaft in rolling contact with an oscillating roller follower. The rocker arm motion was specified as a function of the camshaft angle of rotation. The method of kinematic coefficients was used to determine the camshaft profile and the radius of curvature of the camshaft at the contact interface. The vector loop approach was used to calculate the lubricant entraining velocity. A numerical model for the dynamic elastohydrodynamic lubrication of rolling line contact was developed. This model uses as input the kinematics of the camshaft and roller follower mechanism. The one-dimensional Reynolds and elasticity equations were simultaneously solved using the multigrid multilevel technique to obtain the pressure and film thickness distributions within the lubricant film as a function of time. The time-dependent pressure and film thickness distributions for different loadings and camshaft angular velocities are presented. Presented at the 49th...