Thermal EHL Analysis of Circular Contacts With Measured Surface Roughness

Abstract

Time dependent thermal EHL circular contact results with measured surface roughness were obtained to analyze the effects of roughness on pressure, film thickness, temperature, and coefficient of friction. Both contact surfaces are considered to be rough. Multilevel multigrid techniques (with multigrid integration) were used to solve the system of two dimensional Reynolds, elasticity and three dimensional energy equations simultaneously. The effects of surface roughness under various loads, speeds, and slip conditions have been studied. Surface roughness causes pressure and temperature spikes and increases the coefficient of friction, and surface roughness flattens due to the high pressure in EHL contact. The higher the load, speed and slide to roll ratio, the more significant the effect of the surface roughness. A comparison between rough EHL and smooth EHL results indicates that surface roughness cannot be ignored in EHL analysis.