Experimental evaluation of EHD film shape and its comparison with numerical solution

Colorimetric interferomentry has been applied to the study of EHD lubricati on of point contacts under pure rolling conditions to obtain lubricant film shapes with high accuracy and resolution. An RGB CCD camera together with an extensive image processing software has enabled real time evaluation of chromatic interferograms. The classical numerical isothermal solution of EH D lubrication of point contacts has been used for the comparison with three -dimensional representations of film thickness distributions obtained from experiments. A good agreement was found between experimental and numerical EHD film shapes by comparing lubricant film profiles a, rd positions of min imum film thickness. Both experimental results and numerical solution confi rm the ratio between central and minimum film thickness to change significa ntly with operating conditions. [S0742-4787(00)00404-5].