The behaviour of transverse roughness in sliding elastohydrodynamically lubricated contacts

Recent calculations have shown that in a sliding elastohydrodynamically lubricated contact, any initial roughness largely disappears and is replaced by (often large) pressure variations. This paper gives an elementary analysis of the process for transverse roughness which provides the conditions under which it occurs, and allows the magnitude of the pressure ripples to be estimated. If the fluid is non-Newtonian, the behaviour will be very different. © 1992