A Simple Analysis of Texture-Induced Friction Reduction Based on Surface Roughness Ratio

The effect of surface texture on friction reduction under fluid lubrication has been broadly acknowledged in the tribology community. However, lack understanding underlying mechanisms remains a challenge for advancement textured enhanced lubrication. Numerous models have proposed, but they are almost all based hydrodynamic alone and proven complex, system limited unreflective beneficial secondary provided by residual lubricants within texture. This paper presents simple analysis induced actual liquid–solid interface area hypothesis. A model roughness ratio (the between projected solid area) was proposed which (1) is quantitative, straightforward, intuitive sensitive to shape fraction; (2) directly reflects literature; (3) general data trend collected literature data. By focusing variations key parameters, combined with sampling independent studies demonstrated that increased pit depth-to-diameter (d/D) most significant 0.01 0.2; further increase d/D only marginally affects coefficient; texture’s fraction plays much weaker role than depth/diameter reduction. may prove useful gaining more insights into texture-enhanced providing tool quantitatively studying mechanism often cited literature.