Numerical Analysis of Elastohydrodynamic Lubrication with Non Newtonian Lubricant

Elastohydrodynamic lubrication is a form of hydrodynamic lubrication involving physical interaction between two contacting surfaces and liquid where elastic deformation of the contacting surfaces due to heavily loading applied will affect the elastohydrodynamic pressure and fluid film thickness significantly. In this paper, a line contact EHL is modeled through the cylinder contact to a flat surface to represent the application of roller bearing. This solution is limited to two dimensional line contact problem only, an infinite length of cylinder was used as physical modeling. The behavior of non-Newtonian fluid also was investigated using power law fluid model. Bearing speed is to be assumed in steady state and temperature is assumed constant. The bearing performance parameters such as pressure and film thickness of lubricated contacts are calculated using Newton-Raphson method.The results show that the peak pressure increases as the parameters such as velocity, load and material parameter were increases and the spike was found to shift to the center of roller. The film was almost flat at contact region and formed a dimple shape near the outlet flow. The value of pressure spike and minimum film thickness were smaller at lower speed and were increased during raising speed then the peak point was found to be shifted to center of roller.