The Role of Fragility in EHL Entrapment

EHL entrapments are known to be highly dependent on the lubricant viscous characteristics. One such property is fragility, whose significant effect on entrapments we investigate here for the first time. We employ both experimental measurements and a numerical transient EHL simulation. We find that fragility is an extremely important property and, at least for low viscosity lubricants, must be included in high pressure EHL calculations for accurate prediction of physical behavior.