Lubrication With Binary Mixtures: Bubbly Oil

Mixtures do not exhibit Newtonian behavior even when their individual components themselves are Newtonian, and thus classical lubrication theory is not applicable to bearings lubricated with mixtures. Our objective is to extend hydrodynamic lubrication theory to lubrication with mixtures of a Newtonian liquid and an ideal gas. To this end, we make use of the theory of interacting continua and derive two coupled non-linear equations in component densities. The extended theory is tested on finite journal bearings: our results for pressure distribution show good qualitative agreement with the experimental data of Braun et al.