4 Predictive formulas
The authors previously presented curve-fit formulas to predict the film thickness and asperity load ratio for fully-flooded line-contact EHL [12] as well as point-contact EHL [13]. In this study, the results from wide sets of simulations with different input are used to obtain expressions for the film thickness and asperity load in starved lubrication regime.
4.1 Line contact
Simulations are done within the range of input displayed in Table 1. The roughness range covers the theoretically smooth surfaces ( =0) to the combined roughness of 1.27 µm for equivalent radius of 1 in. ( =5×10−5). The hardness range covers the Vickers hardness of 1.1–6.8 GPa for steel.
Table 1. Range of input parameters selected for simulation (line contact).
Parameter ξ W U G V
Min 0 2×10−5 1×10−12 2500 0 0.005
Max 0.4 5×10−4 1×10−10 7500 5×10−5 0.03
In each simulation, the ratio of starved to fully-flooded central film thickness ( and minimum film thickness as well as the asperity load ratio (La) is obtained for different degrees of starvation. Regression analyses are performed for the results of more than 200 simulation cases to obtain the ratio of starved to fully-flooded central film thickness and minimum film thickness as
equation6
Notice that the regression analysis verifies the linear relationship between the ratio of starved to fully-flooded central film thickness and the starvation degree explained in the previous section.
The central and the minimum film thickness in starved-lubrication regime can be simply obtained as
equation7
where the fully-flooded values are given in Eqs. (A-1) and (A-2) (Appendix A) according to Ref. [12].
The results from the simulations reveal that the asperity load ratio in starved lubrication is not only a function of the starvation degree, but also a function of other operating parameters. Regression analyses predict the following asperity load ratio in the starved regime:
equation8
Note that Eq. (8) is very similar to the fully-flooded equation (Eq. (A-3)) except that it contains a new term for the starvation degree (ξ). In the case of fully-flooded inlet, ξ=0 and Eq. (8) reverts back to Eq. (A-3).
Table B1 (Appendix