Full EHL Simulations Using the Actual Ree–Eyring Model for Shear-Thinning Lubricants

2008 ◽  
Vol 131 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Punit Kumar ◽  
M. M. Khonsari ◽  
Scott Bair

The Eyring sinh law, which is the most widely used model to describe the shear-thinning behavior of elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) lubricants, fails to replicate the experimentally measured flow curves for shear-thinning lubricants. Interestingly, this law was rejected by Eyring for shear-thinning fluids and, in fact, it was found useful only for fluids thought to exhibit thixotropy. The “actual Ree–Eyring model” for shear-thinning involves multiple flow units with appropriate relaxation times. This paper presents an extensive set of full EHL line and point contact simulations to investigate the usefulness of the actual Ree–Eyring model in EHL applications with shear-thinning lubricants. Comparisons with published experimental data establish the validity of the actual Ree–Eyring model. Also presented is the application of an appropriate shifting rule expected to improve the agreement between simulations and experiments.

Author(s):  
H Nishikawa ◽  
K Ueda ◽  
M Kaneta ◽  
J Wang ◽  
P Yang

The effects of longitudinal surface roughness on the oil film temperature are studied numerically based on Eyring and Newtonian fluid flow models under point contact rolling and sliding elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) conditions. There is a significant difference in oil film temperature distribution between the Eyring or shear thinning fluid and the Newtonian fluid. In shear thinning fluids, the relationship between the oil film temperature distribution and the roughness around the central contact area becomes out-of-phase, i.e. the temperature of oil film is higher at the valley than at the ridge of asperity. Such a phenomenon occurs easily under short wavelength and low amplitude of roughness, and moderate entrainment velocities depending on the slide-roll ratio.


2008 ◽  
Vol 130 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Punit Kumar ◽  
M. M. Khonsari

An extensive set of full elastohydrodynamic lubrication point contact simulations has been used to develop correction factors to account for the effect of shear-thinning lubricant behavior on the central and minimum film thickness in circular contacts under pure rolling condition. The film thickness for a shear-thinning lubricant can be easily obtained by dividing the corresponding Newtonian film thickness by the appropriate correction factor. Comparisons of the film thickness values obtained using the correction factors have been matched with the published experimental results pertaining to shear-thinning lubricants with a variety of realistic flow and piezoviscous properties under a wide range of operating speed. The good agreement between them establishes the validity and versatility of the correction factors developed in this paper.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaobai Li ◽  
Siyuan Huang ◽  
Jungeng Fan

In this study, the gas holdup of bubble swarms in shear-thinning fluids was experimentally studied at superficial gas velocities ranging from 0.001 to 0.02 m·s−1. Carboxylmethyl cellulose (CMC) solutions of 0.2 wt%, 0.6 wt%, and 1.0 wt% with sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) as the surfactant were used as the power-law (liquid phase), and nitrogen was used as the gas phase. Effects of SDS concentration, rheological behavior, and physical properties of the liquid phase and superficial gas velocity on gas holdup were investigated. Results indicated that gas holdup increases with increasing superficial gas velocity and decreasing CMC concentration. Moreover, the addition of SDS in CMC solutions increased gas holdup, and the degree increased with the surfactant concentration. An empirical correlation was proposed for evaluating gas holdup as a function of liquid surface tension, density, effective viscosity, rheological property, superficial gas velocity, and geometric characteristics of bubble columns using the experimental data obtained for the different superficial gas velocities and CMC solution concentrations with different surfactant solutions. These proposed correlations reasonably fitted the experimental data obtained for gas holdup in this system.


Author(s):  
I. I. Kudish ◽  
P. Kumar ◽  
M. M. Khonsary ◽  
S. Bair

The prediction of elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) film thickness requires knowledge of the lubricant properties. Today, in many instances, the properties have been obtained from a measurement of the central film thickness in an optical EHL point contact simulator and the assumption of a classical Newtonian film thickness formula. This technique has the practical advantage of using an effective pressure-viscosity coefficient which compensates for shear-thinning. We have shown by a perturbation analysis and by a full EHL numerical solution that the practice of extrapolating from a laboratory scale measurement of film thickness to the film thickness of an operating contact within a real machine may substantially overestimate the film thickness in the real machine if the machine scale is smaller and the lubricant is shear-thinning in the inlet zone.


Author(s):  
Yuchuan Liu ◽  
Q. Jane Wang ◽  
Scott Bair ◽  
Philippe Vergne

We present a realistic elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) simulation in point contact using a Carreau-like model for the shear-thinning response and the Doolittle-Tait free-volume viscosity model for the piezoviscous response. The liquid is a high viscosity polyalphaolefin which possesses a relatively low threshold for shear-thinning. As a result, the measured EHL film thickness is about one-half of the Newtonian prediction. We derived and numerically solved the two-dimensional generalized Reynolds equation for the modified Carreau model based on Greenwood [1]. Departing from many previous solutions, the viscosity models used for the pressure and shear dependence were obtained entirely from viscometer measurements. Truly remarkable agreement is found in the comparisons of simulation and experiment for traction coefficient and for film thickness in both pure rolling and sliding cases. This agreement validates the use of a generalized Newtonian model in EHL.


2008 ◽  
Vol 130 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuchuan Liu ◽  
Q. Jane Wang ◽  
Ivan Krupka ◽  
Martin Hartl ◽  
Scott Bair

Lubricant base oils are often blends of different molecular weight cuts to arrive at a specified ambient pressure viscosity and, to improve the temperature-viscosity behavior or to simply increase the viscosity, viscosity-modifying polymer additives are often added to the base oil. This paper investigates the effect of mixture rheology on elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) film thickness using EHL contact measurements and a full numerical analysis for three synthetic lubricants including two single-component lubricants PAO650 and PAO100 and a mixture of these. The pressure and shear dependences of the viscosity of these lubricants were measured with high-pressure viscometers; viscosities were not adjusted to fit experiment. The point contact film thicknesses for these lubricants in pure rolling were measured using a thin-film colorimetric interferometry apparatus. Numerical simulations based on the measured rheology show very good agreement with the measurements of film thickness while the Newtonian prediction is up to twice the measurement. These results validate the use of realistic shear-thinning and pressure-viscosity models, which originate from viscosity measurements. It is conceivable that simulation may provide a means to “engineer” lubricants with the optimum balance of film thickness and friction through intelligent mixing of components.


Author(s):  
Jinlei Cui ◽  
Peiran Yang ◽  
Motohiro Kaneta ◽  
Ivan Krupka

Transient behaviour of tribo-characteristics caused by transversely oriented ridges on point contact surfaces was investigated based on a thermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication analysis. The ridges were assumed to exist on both the contact surfaces with different velocities. Results show that the interaction of ridges gives a large influence on the local film thickness, pressure, friction coefficient, temperatures on both the solid surfaces and temperature in the oil film. It is also pointed out that the size of the contact bodies brings strong effect on the temperature distribution and shear rate as well as on the friction coefficient. Furthermore, it is revealed that under rolling-sliding conditions, the shear-thinning property of the lubricant is negligible when the size of the contact body is large enough. However, shear-thinning effect plays an important role when the size is extremely small.


2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuchuan Liu ◽  
Q. Jane Wang ◽  
Dong Zhu ◽  
Wenzhong Wang ◽  
Yuanzhong Hu

This paper discussed the computational accuracy of rough-surface point-contact isothermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) analysis by investigating the effects of differential scheme, viscosity-pressure, and shear-thinning models. An EHL experiment with multitransverse ridges was employed as simulated target. Four differential schemes, including the combined and the separate first-order and second-order backward schemes, were investigated. It is found that the separate second-order backward scheme offers the best results based on the comparison with the experimental data, with which two roughness derivatives may be fully or partially canceled each other; thus, the discretization error induced by roughness can be reduced. The consistency of differential schemes is an important issue for the separate schemes. The Yasutomi free-volume viscosity-pressure model and the Eyring rheological model are found to yield the numerical simulations the closest to experimental results.


1967 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 1505-1515
Author(s):  
T. Gillespie

Abstract The hydrodynamic-structural theory of viscosity is extended to take into account the possibility of a distribution of relaxation times. A new equation is presented which is easily applied to experimental data. The effect of a distribution of lifetimes is to extend the range of shear rate over which shear thinning occurs. When the ratio of the largest relaxation time to the smallest relaxation time is greater than 1 but less than 10 the new equation gives results in agreement with the Willamson equation. When this ratio of maximum relaxation time to minimum relaxation time is 300 ± 100 the new equation agrees with an equation recently suggested by Cross. The utility of the new equation is discussed and is illustrated by using it to determine the relaxation time spectra in polystyrene melts.


Author(s):  
J.Y Jang ◽  
M.M Khonsari ◽  
S Bair

Realistic prediction of the characteristics of the elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) contact requires consideration of the appropriate constitutive equation for the lubricant. In many applications, the lubricant exhibits a shear-thinning behaviour which significantly affects the film thickness. In this paper, we present a generalized formulation that can efficiently treat shear-thinning fluids with provision for compressibility in the EHL line contact. Specifically, the Carreau model and the sinh-law model are investigated. An extensive set of numerical solutions and comparison with experiments reveal that the Carreau equation properly captures the film thickness behaviour under both rolling and sliding conditions.


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