Ja. Greenwood et Jj. Kauzlarich, ELASTOHYDRODYNAMIC FILM THICKNESS FOR SHEAR-THINNING LUBRICANTS, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part J, Journal of engineering tribology, 212(J3), 1998, pp. 179-191
Mineral oils and synthetic lubricants that are thickened by polymers o
f large molecular weight are being promoted for automobiles as well as
aircraft gas turbines. These multiweight lubricants are found to have
a complicated Newtonian and non-Newtonian viscosity depending upon sh
ear rate in the bearing. Ln general, polymer-thickened mineral oil lub
ricants show a first Newtonian behaviour at a low shear rate, shear-th
inning non-Newtonian behaviour at a higher shear rate and a second New
tonian behaviour at a very high shear rate, with a second Newtonian vi
scosity approximately equal to the base oil viscosity. Because of high
shear thinning in the inlet region of rolling element bearings, predi
cting the film thickness using the low shear rate first Newtonian visc
osity can be in error, in particular examples, by a factor of 1/2 for
mineral oil plus 4% methacrylate thickener and 1/7 for mineral oil plu
s 20% polybutene thickener. The case of naturally shear-thinning silic
one fluids is analysed and it is shown that the elastohydrodynamic (EH
D) film thickness is nearly the same for silicones with widely varying
first Newtonian viscosity. A general EHD analysis for shear-thinning
lubricants in pure rolling is presented and shown to agree with known
special cases. A closed-form EHD equation for power law shear-thinning
lubricants is derived, which gives very accurate results for a bearin
g where the inlet state of the rolling element falls in the region whe
re the non-Newtonian viscosity is expected. A comparison with some pub
lished experimental results by Bair and Khonsari is presented.