THE LUBRICATION OF LIGHTLY LOADED CYLINDERS IN COMBINED ROLLING, SLIDING AND NORMAL MOTION WITH COUPLE STRESS FLUID

The lubrication of lightly loaded cylinders with combined rolling, sliding and normal motion is investigated with a couple stress fluid as lubricant cavitation boundary conditions. It is shown that the major bearing performance characteristics can be accounted for by means of a dimensionless parameter, q, involving the "normal" and "entraining" velocities, the minimum film thickness and the radius of the geometrically equivalent cylinder near a plane. The load capacity and frictional drag increase as the squeeze velocity increases. This increase is enhanced by decreasing the couple stress parameter, tau. However, when the two surfaces move apart these results are reversed. It is convenient to adopt the least-squares procedure for the accurate representation of the line of cavitation and the line of maximum pressure. The effect of couple stresses on the point of cavitation is quite significant compared with viscous fluid of the same viscosity.