Experimental Investigation of Lubricant Flow Properties Under Micro Oil Supply Condition

Abstract

Lubricant flow properties of polyalphaolefin (PAO) oil have been experimentally investigated based on a ball-on-disc configuration under micro oil supply condition. The oil pool shape and central film thickness in the contact region were obtained using fluorescence microscopy and optical interferometry, respectively. It has been found that the relative length between the inlet meniscus and Hertzian center point in the oil pool to Hertzian radius was much larger than 1 in a smaller lubricant supply of 20 μl, and the corresponding contact region initially entered the elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) region and then became starved with the increasing speed. The variations of the relative film thickness as a function of starvation degree and the ratio of relative length to Hertzian radius were proposed to explain the obtained results. Besides, the fluorescence technique was used to directly observe the inlet meniscus position of the oil pool and helped to gain more understanding of the lubricant flow properties under micro oil supply condition.