FRICTIONAL HEATING OF TRIBOLOGICAL CONTACTS

Wherever friction occurs, mechanical energy is transformed into heat. The maximum surface temperature associated with this heating can have an important influence on the tribological behavior of the contacting components. For band contacts the partitioning of heat has already bee n studied extensively; however, for circular and elliptic contacts onl y approximate solutions exist. rn this work a numerical algorithm is d escribed to solve the steady state heat partitioning and the associate d flash temperatures for arbitrary shaped contacts by matching the sur face temperatures of the two contacting solids at all points inside th e contact ar ea. For uniform and semi-ellipsoidal shaped heat source d istributions, representing EHL conditions and dry or boundary lubricat ion conditions respectively, function fits for practical use are prese nted giving the flash temperature as a function of the Peclet numbers of the contacting solids, the conductivity ratio, and the aspect ratio of the contact ellipse. These function fits are based on asymptotic s olutions for small and large Peclet numbers and are valid for the enti re range of Peclet numbers. By comparison with numerical results they are shown to be accurate within 5%, even for the situation of opposing surface velocities.