In a classical paper slightly after the turn of the century, Lord Rayleigh obtained the optimum one dimensional slider bearing profile, the Rayleigh step. His criteria for optimality was that the load capacity per unit length of the bearing be maximum among all profiles having a given minimum film thickness. Since Rayleigh, an open question has been the determination of the optimum two dimensional bearing profile based on the same criteria as above. In this paper we propose a method for answering that question using algorithms which we have recently developed for this class of problems.
In 1918 Lord Rayleigh posed the problem of finding the profile (shape) of a one dimensional slider bearing which will support the greatest weight. In this paper we give, in closed form, the solution of this problem.
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