MULTILEVEL SOLUTION FOR THERMAL ELASTOHYDRODYNAMIC LUBRICATION OF ROLLING SLIDING CIRCULAR CONTACTS/

A fast multigrid approach is presented for the analysis of thermal ela stohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) under rolling/sliding circular conta cts at high loads and high slip ratios with low computing time on a pe rsonal computer. This fast solver combines direct-iteration, multigrid , Newton-Raphson, Gauss-Seidel iteration, and multilevel multi-integra tion methods into one working environment that can reduce the computat ional complexity from O(n(3)) to O(n/nn) for the thermal EHL problem u nder rolling/sliding circular contacts. Since the coupled Reynolds and energy equations are simultaneously solved by the Newton-Raphson sche me, the iteration for the convergence solution is less than those of t he classical approach. Results show that thermal effects on the pressu re profile and film thickness are significant for a wide range of load s, speeds and slip ratios. The maximum midfilm and surface temperature rise in the Hertzian contact region increases with increasing slip ra tio, dimensionless speed, and load. The minimum film thickness decreas es with increasing load and slip ratio, and decreasing dimensionless s peed.