An EHL Extension of the Unsteady FBNS Algorithm

Abstract

Many engineering applications rely on lubricated gaps where the hydrodynamic pressure distribution is influenced by cavitation phenomena and elastic deformations. To obtain details about the conditions within the lubricated gap, solvers are required that can model cavitation and elastic deformation effects efficiently when a large amount of discretization cells is employed. The presented unsteady EHL-FBNS solver can compute the solution of such large problems that require the consideration of both mass-conserving cavitation and elastic deformation. The execution time of the presented algorithm scales almost with Nlog (N) where N is the number of computational grid points. A detailed description of the algorithm and the discretized equations is presented. The MATLAB© code is provided in the supplements along with a maintained version on GitHub to encourage its usage and further development. The output of the solver is compared to and validated with analytical, simulated, and experimental results from the literature to provide a detailed comparison of different discretization schemes of the Couette term in presence of gap height discontinuities. As a final result, the most favorable scheme is identified for the unsteady study of surface textures in ball-on-disc tribometers under EHL conditions.