Deterministic surface roughness effects on elastic material contact with shear thinning fluid media

Abstract The formation of lubrication films is described using the hydrodynamic lubrication theory, which is based on the Reynolds equation that includes shear thinning behaviors of lubricant. Contacting surfaces are considered to undergo elastic deformation owing to concentrated contact pressures that exceed 1.0 GPa in most engineering applications. Under the contact condition of a high load on a relatively small contact area, elastic deformation of contacting bodies directly influences the formation of the lubricated film. Elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) analysis is applied to correctly analyze the lubricated contact. Under an EHL contact, the scale of the lubrication film thickness is frequently less than that of the surface roughness that results from either the manufacturing or running-in processes. In this work, surface roughness is considered in detail, and two-dimensional surface roughness is measured as that characterizing general engineering surface roughness. The deterministic method regarding the surface roughness is considered for computing EHL film formation under several contact conditions such as load, contact velocity, and elasticity of contacting materials.