Numerical Analysis of Point Contact EHL on Coated Substrates

Author(s):  
Zhan-jiang Wang ◽  
Yuan-zhong Hu ◽  
Wen-zhong Wang ◽  
Hui Wang

Performances of point contact EHL on multilayered or coated substrates have been analyzed in this paper via computer simulations, with emphasis on comparing the effects of Newtonian and non-Newtonian lubricants. The lubrication system consists of a rigid ball in contact with a smooth coated flat. The coating is perfectly bonded to an elastic substrate and it has a uniform thickness. The rigid ball has surface velocity U relative to the contact point. The hydrodynamic pressure p is governed by a generalized Reynolds equation in which the non-Newtonian effects of lubricants are characterized by two factors whose values are determined based on lubricant rheology. The Papkovich-Neuber potentials were employed to get the response functions in frequency domain for layered contact problems, and the influence coefficients relating pressure to surface displacements and stresses can be obtained via invert Fourier transform. The surface deformation was then calculated in terms of the pressure-displacement influence coefficients and the DC-FFT method was used to speed up the computation. The distributions of pressure, film thickness and subsurface stress have been analyzed for lubricants with different rheological behaviors, from which pressure and film thickness profiles along the rolling direction are calculated for Newtonian and Non-Newtonian lubricants. The central film thickness become thicker for stiffer coatings in the case of Newtonian lubricants, but the trend is reversed for Non-Newtonian lubricants. The surface stresses along the rolling direction show a spike corresponding to the pressure, which is more significant with stiffer coatings in the Newtonian case, but the spike is less visible for Non-Newtonian lubricants.

Author(s):  
Hai-zhou Huang ◽  
Xi-chuan Niu ◽  
Xiao-yang Yuan

To investigate the thermal EHL (elastohydrodynamic lubrication) in point contact transmission, a model considering the two-dimensional surface velocity of tooth face and the running-in is proposed. The numerical solutions for pressure, temperature and film thickness distribution in the contact zone are obtained by solving equations including the Reynolds, Energy and the elastic displacement with variable dimension meshing method. The model was used to study the point contact transmission of the circular arc gear in a windlass. The main results show that it is pure rolling along the direction of tooth width, and the rolling speed plays a leading role in improving the lubricating performance and transmission efficiency of circular arc gear. The squeeze film effect makes the pressure peak tend to be gentle and the film thickness increase slightly.


Lubricants ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hazim U. Jamali ◽  
Amjad Al-Hamood ◽  
Oday I. Abdullah ◽  
Adolfo Senatore ◽  
Josef Schlattmann

The principal factors that affect the characteristics of contact problem between cam and follower vary enormously during the operating cycle of this mechanism. This includes radius of curvature, surface velocities and applied load. It has been found over the last decades that the mechanism operates under an extremely thin film of lubricant. Any practical improvement in the level of film thickness that separates the contacted surfaces represents an essential step towards a satisfactory design of the system. In this paper a detailed numerical study is presented for the cam and follower (flat-faced) lubrication including the effect of introducing an axial modification (parabolic shape) of the cam depth on the levels of film thickness and pressure distribution. This is achieved based on a point contact model for a cam and flat-faced follower system. The results reveal that the cam form of modification has considerable consequences on the level of predicted film thickness and pressure distribution as well as surface deformation.


Author(s):  
W-Z Wang ◽  
H Wang ◽  
Y-C Liu ◽  
Y-Z Hu ◽  
D Zhu

A fundamental issue of lubrication analysis is the calculation of surface deformation, which includes two major steps: determination of influence coefficients and multiplication and summation. There are various interpolation schemes, such as the bilinear interpolation, the piecewise constant function or Green's function, available for determining the influence coefficients, while the summation operation may be performed by using one of the following methods: direct summation (DS), multilevel multi-integration (MLMI) or the discrete convolution and fast Fourier transform (DC-FFT) method. To limit the periodical errors, the proper way to implement the DC-FFT method is described in detail. The computation efficiency and numerical accuracy are compared by applying the different methods to typical contact problems. The results show that the three methods can achieve comparable numerical accuracy, but the DC-FFT method shows much higher computation efficiency than the others, especially when a great number of grid points are involved. It is concluded that the DC-FFT method has great potential in applications to the numerical analysis of, for example, surface deformations and temperature rises.


1981 ◽  
Vol 103 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. P. Evans ◽  
R. W. Snidle

The paper describes a technique for solving the inverse lubrication problem under point contact elastohydrodynamic conditions, i.e. the calculation of a film thickness and shape corresponding to a given hydrodynamic pressure distribution by an inverse solution of Reynolds’ equation. The effect of compressibility and influence of pressure upon viscosity are included in the analysis. The technique will be of use in solving the point contact elastohydrodynamic lubrication problem at heavy loads.


Author(s):  
G Karami ◽  
H P Evans ◽  
R W Snidle

The paper describes an isothermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication analysis of rollers having circumferential sinusoidal roughness. Theoretical results are shown which demonstrate the influence of roughness amplitude on the distribution of hydrodynamic pressure and film thickness at constant load and constant roughness wavelength. At a large roughness amplitude the hydrodynamic pressure in the valleys between asperity contacts is insignificant and each asperity contact behaves as an ‘isolated’ elastohydrodynamic point contact. As the roughness is reduced, however, the valley pressures build up, the pressure becomes more uniformly distributed in the axial direction and the minimum film thickness increases.


2016 ◽  
Vol 835 ◽  
pp. 593-598
Author(s):  
Khanittha Wongseedakaew

This paper presents the theoretical characteristics of elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) in point contact under steady operating conditions of ball bearing thrust bearing. The numerical simulations employed a finite different method, Newton Raphson method and multigrid method to solve the modified Reynolds equation with a Non-Newtonian fluid. The general numerical schemes are implemented to investigate the profile of pressure and film thickness, with varying applied loads viscosity of lubricants and speeds. The results show that the applied load has significant effect on the film thickness profile. The contact is increase area but film thickness decrease as the applied load increase. The minimum film thickness and friction coefficient both increase significantly as viscosity of lubricant is increased. The increasing of surface velocity, the film thickness increase but film pressure decrease.


2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Zhao ◽  
Edwin A.H. Vollebregt ◽  
Cornelis W. Oosterlee

The boundary element method (BEM) is widely used in fast numerical solvers for concentrated elastic contact problems arising from the wheel-rail contact in the railway industry. In this paper we extend the range of applicability of BEM by computing the influence coefficients (ICs) numerically. These ICs represent the Green’s function of the problem, i.e. the surface deformation due to unit loads. They are not analytically available when the half-space is invalid, for instance in conformal contact. An elastic model is proposed to compute these ICs numerically, by the finite element method (FEM). We present a detailed investigation to find proper strategies of FEM meshing and element types, considering accuracy and computational cost. Moreover, the effects of computed ICs to contact solutions are examined for a Cattaneo shift contact problem. The work in this paper provides a guidance to study fast solvers for the conformal contact.


Author(s):  
H Åström ◽  
C H Venner

In several experimental investigations of grease-lubricated elastohydrodynamic (EHD) contacts indications of soap-thickener formations that enter the contact area have been reported, for example by Kageyama et al. (1), Cann and co-workers (2-4) and Åström and co-workers (5, 6). While passing through a contact such soap-thickener lumps significantly disturb the film thickness by locally increasing the surface deformation. These film-thickness fluctuations must be accompanied by pressure fluctuations, knowledge of which is essential to increase insight in the phenomena determining service life and emitted noise of grease-lubricated contacts. In this paper the authors present a combined experimental/numerical approach to generate insight into such pressure fluctuations. From a fringe pattern obtained with optical interferometry (ball-on-disc apparatus) a film-thickness map is created employing image analysis. This map serves as input to a numerical algorithm for the calculation of the pressure from force balance and elastic deformation theory. Consequently, no assumptions about the rheological behaviour of grease can be made. The method was first tested out on an oil-lubricated contact. This test gave essential insight into the accuracy of the method proposed here and in the magnitude of surface texture induced pressure fluctuations. Subsequently the approach was successfully used to estimate the pressure variations resulting from soap-thickener formations in a grease-lubricated contact (between the same ball and disc).


Author(s):  
V. D’Agostino ◽  
V. Petrone ◽  
A. Senatore

A good and accurate prediction of the elastohydrodynamic lubrication behaviour requires consideration of the constitutive equation for the lubricant. In particular, for applications involving synthetic oils or mineral oil with polymeric additives that exhibit shear-thinning behaviour, the use of an appropriate pressure-viscosity relationship for the lubricant is required to predict the EHL behaviour more accurately [1–3]. For this reason, this paper aims to emphasize the importance of implementing piezo-viscous models with accurate treatment methods in EHL applications. Due to the high pressure in an EHL contact, in fact, the elastic deformation of the surfaces and pressure dependence of viscosity play the pivotal role and in many applications, the lubricant exhibits a shear-thinning behaviour which significantly affects the film thickness [4–6]. The effects of different pressure–viscosity relationships, including the exponential model, the Roelands’ model and specifically, the Doolittle model are investigated and a generalized formulation that can efficiently treat shear-thinning fluids with provision for compressibility in the EHL contact is presented. In the light of above facts, models for 1D and 2D EHL contacts for simulating the behaviour of the pressure distribution and the shape of the film thickness using a generalized Reynolds equation and shear-thinning fluids is developed. In particular for EHL 2D problem a more accurate full multigrid approach has been used and both the analysis is based upon the assumptions of isothermal condition. In this work, in fact, we show that the piezo-viscous rheology of the lubricant plays an important role in determining the value of pressure peaks. Pressure profiles and film shapes are showed and variations of the minimum and central film thickness with dimensionless parameters are also presented. It is found that the real pressure–viscosity behaviour predicted by the free-volume model yields a higher viscosity at the low-pressure area which results in a larger central film thickness. Therefore, due to use of the free-volume model, the presented results are more consistent with literature experimental observations and the Doolittle model effectively predicts the film thickness that closely matches experiments and properly characterizes the behaviour of shear-thinning lubricants.


1971 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. D. Wedeven ◽  
D. Evans ◽  
A. Cameron

Elastohydrodynamic oil film measurements for rolling point contact under starvation conditions are obtained using optical interferometry. The experimental measurements present a reasonably clear picture of the starvation phenomenon and are shown to agree with theoretical predictions. Starvation inhibits the generation of pressure and, therefore, reduces film thickness. It also causes the overall pressure, stress, and elastic deformation to become more Hertzian. Additional experiments using interferometry illustrate: the cavitation pattern, lubricant entrapment, grease lubrication, ball spin, and edge effects in line contact.


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