A Novel Theoretical Approach for the Fast Evaluation of Surface Texturing Effects on Friction and Load Support in Hydrodynamic Bearings

We develop a novel mean field theory of textured surface lubrication for the fast and accurate evaluation of the effect of texture shape, distribution and areal density on the macroscopic hydrodynamic contacts characteristics, such as friction and supported load. The theory, based on the application of the Bruggeman effective medium approach to the thin film Reynolds flow, allows to determine the flow and shear stress factors without the need of any preliminary numerical calculations, therefore drastically reducing the need of large computational resources for the deterministic resolution of texture lubrication. The developed technique appears to be very promising in the process of the fast evaluation of textured surface lubrication performances.