An Advanced Model to Study the Possible Thermomechanical Damage of Lubricated Sliding-Rolling Line Contacts From Soft Particles

Abstract

A model presented earlier by the author (Nikas et al., 1998, 1999) for the study of the possible risks associated with the entrapment of debris particles in lubricated contacts has been refined to account for additional influential factors that could affect the results obtained from the initial model. The new results showed that soft contaminants could indeed be very destructive and damage a concentrated sliding contact mainly due to the thermal stresses developed from the frictional heating of the contact during the plastic compression and shearing of a particle. This model yielded flash temperatures of the order of 100°C and up to 2000°C (or more, until local yield occurs). It also showed that it is often the thermal stresses which cause the problems, rather than the mechanical stresses from particles’ deformation.