The Minimum Film Thickness in Lubricated Line Contacts during a Reversal of Entrainment—Isoviscous Behaviour

Abstract

In most line contacts, the film thickness can be adequately determined using a quasi-static analysis. The one exception appears to occur when the direction of entrainment changes. Here, the quasi-static approach predicts that the film will fall to zero while, in practice, there will always be a finite clearance between the surfaces. It was shown in a previous paper that this minimum clearance depends upon the rate of change of entrainment velocity, and limit expressions for the film thicknesses in the four regimes of lubrication were developed. The present paper examines the transition between the rigid-isoviscous and the elastic-isoviscous regimes and determines how the minimum film thickness behaves in this transition zone.