Micro Lubrication and Heat Transfer in Wedge-Shaped Channel Slider with Convex Surface Texture Based on Lattice Boltzmann Method

Abstract

Hydrodynamic lubrication is widely used between two relatively moving objects, and the effect of fluid flow state and temperature distribution on lubrication performance in wedge-shaped gaps is a popular topic to study. In this paper, the incompressible double-distribution lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is applied to study the effect of micro convex surface texture on micro lubrication and heat transfer in wedge-shaped channels. By comparing this model with the analytical solution of an infinitely wide wedge slider, the maximum pressure calculated by LBM is 0.1081 MPa, and the maximum pressure calculated by the Reynolds equation is 0.1079 MPa. The error of the maximum pressure is 1.11%, and the Reynolds equation result is slightly smaller. The reason is that the Reynolds equation ignores the influence of fluid inertia force on oil film pressure. The results indicate that the application of LBM can be used to study lubrication problems. Compared with the Reynolds equation, LBM can calculate the velocity field and pressure field in the film thickness direction, and can also observe precise flow field details such as vortices. Three micro convex texture shapes were established to study the effects of different convex textures on micro lubrication and oil film temperature distribution, and the velocity distribution, temperature distribution and oil film pressure along the oil film thickness direction were given. Under the same conditions, comparing the oil film pressure with and without surface texture, the results show that the maximum oil film pressure with surface texture 3 is increased by about 4.34% compared with that without surface texture. The slightly convex texture can increase the hydrodynamic lubrication effect and obtain greater load-bearing capacity, helping to reduce the possibility of contact friction. The results show that the convex surface texture can improve the hydrodynamic lubrication performance, increase the load carrying capacity and reduce the possibility of contact friction, and the convex surface texture can influence the temperature distribution of the oil film. At 3.6 mm in the slider length direction and 7.5 μm in the oil film thickness direction, the temperature of surface texture 1 is 402.64 K, the temperature of surface texture 2 is 403.31 K, and the temperature of surface texture 3 is 403.99 K. The presence of vortices is captured at a high convergence ratio.