SPH Modelling of Hydrodynamic Lubrication along Rough Surfaces

Rough and textured surfaces are of paramount importance for lubrication, both in nature and in technology. While surface roughness relevantly influences both friction and wear, artificial surface texturing improves the performance of slider bearings as an energy efficiency action. The simulation of hydrodynamic lubrication by taking into account complex surfaces as boundaries requires the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software able to predict the pressure and the velocity profile through the thickness of the fluid and at any point within the 3D domain. In the present study, a CFD–smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code is applied to simulate hydrodynamic lubrication for a linear slider bearing in the presence of a 3D rough surface, showing the capabilities of CFD–SPH in modelling such complex interaction phenomena. Numerical assessments involve the load capacity, the 3D fields of the velocity vector, and the pressure 3D field (both within the fluid domain and at the fluid–plate interface).