The Effect of Two Sided Surface Roughness on Ultra-Thin Gas Films

Abstract

The influence of two sided striated surface roughness on bearing load carrying capacity is analyzed for very low clearance gas films. As was done for the case of stationary surface roughness [1], a model lubrication equation appropriate for extremely high gas bearing number films is solved analytically for several simple geometry bearings. The analytic solution provides information on the exact relationship between pressure and roughness which makes it possible to ensemble average the lubrication equation before solution, greatly simplifying the solution procedure. It is found that the translating surface roughness has an influence on load similar to that caused by the stationary surface. Exact solutions with the current method are compared with those of the theory attributed to Christensen and To̸nder. The results are strikingly different and serve to bring attention to the fact that for high bearing number compressible lubrication, the Christensen-To̸nder theory is inappropriate. The results reported here should find application in the computer peripherals area where read/write heads now routinely hover over a spinning disk at clearances of 0.25 micron.