Pressure Calculation From Experimentally Evaluated Lubricant Thickness Within EHL Contacts

This paper is concerned with elastohydrodynamic lubrication, especially determination of lubricant film thickness and contact pressure within a point contact of friction surfaces of machine parts. A new solution technique for numerical determination of contact pressure is introduced. Direct measurement of contact pressure is very difficult. Hence, input data of lubricant film thickness obtained from the experiment based on colorimetric interferometry are used for calculation of pressure using the inverse elasticity theory. The algorithm is enhanced by convolution in order to increase calculation speed. The approach gives credible results on smooth contact and it is currently extended to enable the study of contact of friction surfaces with dents.