Hydrodynamic Lubrication of Soft Solids

Lubrication of soft viscoelastic solids

Lubrication flows appear in many applications in engineering, biophysics, and in nature. Separation of surfaces and minimisation of friction and wear is achieved when the lubrication fluid builds up a lift force. In this paper we analyse soft lubricated contacts by treating the solid walls as viscoelastic: soft materials are typically not purely elastic, but dissipate energy under dynamical loa...

Hydrodynamic and Elastohydrodynamic Lubrication

Contents 1. Introduction 2. Stress-induced lubricant degradation 3. Basic equations governing the fluid elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) of line and point contacts 3.1. Equations of fluid motion 3.2. Contact surface displacements in line and point lubricated contacts 4. Steady isothermal EHL problems for lightly loaded non-conformal line contacts 5. Steady isothermal EHL problems for heavil...

Hydrodynamic Lubrication of Sliding Vanes

Hydrodynamic Lubrication of Rough Surfaces

Interacting surfaces are frequently found in mechanical systems and components. A lubricant is often added between the surfaces to separate them from mechanical contact in order to increase life and performance of the contacting surfaces. In this work various aspects of hydrodynamic lubrication are investigated theoretically. This is where interacting surfaces are completely separated by a flui...

Soft lubrication.

We consider some basic principles of fluid-induced lubrication at soft interfaces. In particular, we quantify how a soft substrate changes the geometry of and the forces between surfaces sliding past each other. By considering the model problem of a symmetric nonconforming contact moving tangentially to a thin elastic layer, we determine the normal force in the small and large deflection limit,...