Hydrodynamic Lubrication of Conformal Contacting Surfaces With Parabolic Grooves

Abstract

The effect of surface texturing in the form of parabolic grooves on the hydrodynamic lubrication properties is investigated in this paper. Numerical simulation of the pressure distribution of lubricant between a textured slider and a smooth, moving slider has been performed. The evaluation criterion of hydrodynamic effect of dimensionless average pressure is calculated and presented with the variation of minimum film thickness, groove width, groove depth, spacing and orientation angle. Optimum values of geometrical parameters such as the dimensionless groove depth, spacing and orientation angle are obtained which correspond to maximum average pressure. It is also noted that the average pressure increases monotonically with increasing groove width. The results show that the hydrodynamic effect can be improved by employing optimized surface texturing design.