DDC Lubrication: A New Concept in Tribology

A new lubrication concept is presented, Deep Disconnected Cavities. It differs from the lubrication of microcavities, previously treated by other authors, by the deepness of the cavities. The validity of Reynolds’ equation and nonturbulent conditions are assumed. By a Taylor expansion scheme, it is shown that the roughness effects are expressible in terms of roughness factors modifying the Reynolds equation, similar to those proposed by Patir and Cheng (1978). Unlike those established for ordinary roughness, the DDC factors are independent of local film thickness and roughness amplitude (cavity depth), and may therefore be used to modify standard hydro-dynamic parameters. By a different mathematical approach, involving upper and lower bounds on the various hydrodynamic quantities, it is found that Reynolds’ equation and all the other hydrodynamic expressions may be written just as for smooth surfaces, with the following modifications: 1. The film thickness should be expressed by the minimum gap function, and not by the mean gap function. 2. There are, in general, three effective viscosities, lower than the physical one, two of which are associated with the x and y directions respectively and appear in the modified Reynolds equation as well as in the flow terms. The third one appears only in the expression for shear stress.