Improved modified Reynolds equation for thin-film gas lubrication from an extended slip velocity boundary condition

An extended slip velocity boundary condition is derived from the regularized 13 moment equations firstly. Different from the existing slip velocity boundary condition, the slip coefficients of the extended one are not fixed, which will change with the wall accommodation coefficient and the Knudsen number of the gas flow. Using the extended slip velocity condition, an improved modified Reynolds equation for thin-film gas lubrication is established. From solving the improved modified Reynolds equation, the pressure distribution of the slider gas bearing is obtained and has a better agreement with that from the direct simulation Monte Carlo method under different pitch angles and wall velocities. It is found that the improved modified Reynolds equation can predict a more accurate pressure distribution of the slider gas bearing than the Fukui and Kaneko’s lubrication model from the linearized Boltzmann equation in the near transition regime.