The influence of surface topography on mixed plasto-elastohydrodynamic lubrication in point contacts

Surface topography plays an important role in mixed lubrication. However, the influence of the surface topography's morphological characteristics on lubrication performance is still not fully understood. In this article, we employ digital filtering and the Johnson transformation system, and we use a mixed plasto-elastohydrodynamic lubrication model to simulate the lubricated contact between rough spherical surfaces with different morphological characteristic parameters. The influence of skewness, kurtosis, and the wavelength factor, that is, the ratio between the autocorrelation lengths in the transversal and longitudinal directions, on contact pressure, film thickness, and von Mises (subsurface) stress, is examined with the mixed plasto-elastohydrodynamic lubrication model. The results confirm that plastic deformation leads to lower pressure distribution, distributed over a larger contact area than the pure elastohydrodynamic lubrication solution. Moreover, it is found that an increase in the kurtosis may improve the lubrication performance, while the opposite is true for the skewness and the wavelength factor. We believe that the insights obtained by means of the numerical simulations presented herein, would facilitate the design and manufacturing processes of the surfaces used for machine elements operating in the mixed plasto-elastohydrodynamic lubrication regime.