Journal international des progrès technologiques
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Abstrait

Analysis of Starved EHL Line Contacts for Lubricants with Linear Pressure Viscosity Dependence

Anuradha Parinam, Ram Karan

Most of the available works in elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) have been carried out considering exponential pressure-viscosity relationship. However, recently, some lubricants such as 2, 3-dimethylpentane, pure hydrocarbon, water/glycol solutions etc. are reported to show linear piezo-viscous response. The investigations carried out using exponential pressure-viscosity relation for such lubricants yield to large errors as they highly overestimate the film thickness values. Also, a major aspect of practical EHL behavior i.e. starvation effect still remains largely unexplored. Starvation refers to the inadequate filling of the conjunction and has a considerable effect on EHL characteristics such as film thickness and coefficient of friction. Therefore, a numerical analysis is carried out for lubricants exhibiting linear piezo-viscosity to analyze the influence of starvation in EHL line contacts. Starvation effect is modeled by shifting the inlet meniscus towards the contact zone. The Reynolds equation is discretized using finite differences and solved along with the load balance equation using Newton-Raphson technique.