Boundary slips induced temperature rise and film thickness reduction under sliding/rolling contact in thermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication

Temperature rise and film thickness reduction are the most important factors in elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL). In the EHL contact area, interfacial resistances (velocity/thermal slips) induced by the molecular interaction between lubricant and solid become significant due to the large surface/volume ratio. Although the velocity slip has been investigated extensively, less attention has been paid on the thermal slip in the EHL regime. In this study, numerical simulations were conducted by applying three cases of boundary slips to surfaces under sliding/rolling contacts moving in the same direction for the Newtonian thermal EHL. We found that the coupled velocity/thermal slips lead the most significant temperature rise and film thickness reduction among the three cases. The velocity slip results in a lower temperature in the lubricant and solids, whereas the thermal slip causes a temperature rise in the entire contact area in the lubricant as the film thickness decreases simultaneously. Furthermore, the effect of thermal slip on lubrication is more dominant than that of velocity slip, which increases the entrainment velocity or slide–roll ratio