KEYWORDS

Diester Oil, Starvation, Line Contact, Elastohydrodynamic Lubrication

ANALYSIS OF DIESTER LUBRICATED STARVED EHL LINE CONTACTS

Synthetic diester lubricants are widely being used to lubricate the EHL contacts of gears and bearings as they provide numerous performance advantages over mineral oils. The pressure viscosity behavior of these lubricants predominantly follows the exponential pressure viscosity relationship. Further, the EHL contacts under sevier operating conditions undergo starvation leading to premature failure of the contact. Therefore the influence of starvation in EHL line contacts lubricated with diester-based lubricant has been analyzed. Starvation effect is modeled by shifting the inlet meniscus towards the contact zone. The governing equations comprising of Reynolds equation, film thickness equation and load balance equation is solved used Finite element approach. The results show that starvation has a great influence on the film thickness and is largely influenced by the operating parameters. Improved understanding of the diester lubricated starved EHL contact is obtained from the model.

AUTHORS

Gananath D. Thakre, S.P. Harsha, Satish C. Sharma, Dept. of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India and M.R. Tyagi, Tribology Division, CSIR – Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun, India