Geometric Shape Effects of Surface Texture on the Generation of Hydrodynamic Pressure Between Conformal Contacting Surfaces

Micro-surface texturing design is becoming an important part of surface engineering since engineering practices and analyses have indicated that surface textures may significantly affect the tribological performance of contact interfaces. Advances in the manufacturing technologies of surface finishing and micro-machining, such as laser surface texturing, photolithography, and etching, LIGA process, have made it possible to fabricate different fine structures on various engineering surfaces. Though the influence of micro-surface texturing on hydrodynamic lubrication has been widely investigated over the last decade, such an influence may be complicated and difficult to characterize with only a few statistic surface parameters. Thus, very little attention has been paid to the effects of different textural shapes and orientations on hydrodynamic lubrication, which is the main topic of this article. A theoretical model based on a single dimple was established to investigate the geometric shape and orientation effects on the hydrodynamic pressure generated between conformal contacting surfaces. Using the Successive Over Relaxation method, the average hydrodynamic pressure generated by the texture pattern with the dimples in shapes of circle, ellipse, and triangle at different orientations to the direction of sliding are obtained. The results indicate that geometric shape and orientation have obvious influences on load-carrying capacity of contacting surfaces. With the same dimple area, area ratio and dimple depth given in this research, ellipse dimples perpendicular to the sliding direction showed the best load-carrying capacity. This result agrees with previous experimental results very well.