Fast and Reduced Full-System Finite Element Solution of Line Contact Elastohydrodynamic Lubrication Problems

This paper presents a reduced full-system finite element solution of elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) problems. It aims to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by applying it to the simple isothermal Newtonian line contact case. However the proposed model can be easily extended to more complex situations. This model is based on a full-system finite element resolution of the EHL equations: Reynolds, linear elasticity and load balance. A reduced model is proposed for the linear elasticity problem. For this, a novel “EHL-basis” model order reduction technique is introduced. The latter requires only a few degrees of freedom to compose the elastic deformation of the solid components. In addition, a comparison with the full model shows an order of magnitude cpu time gain with errors of the order of only 1‰ for the central and minimum lubricant film thicknesses.