Analytical modeling of the thermal behavior of a thin lubricant film under nonlinear conditions

Abstract

Lubrication is an important phenomenon in a wide field of industry such as automotive, aerospace, mechanical transmission systems, and many others. The viscosity of fluid is a determining factor in the thermal behaviour of lubricant and solid surfaces in friction. In practice the viscosity varies strongly as a function of local pressure and temperature. In this study we are interested in the effect of temperature on the viscosity and the thermal behavior of the lubricant. We solve the dynamic and energy equations under non-linear conditions considering that the viscosity decreases following an exponential law of the temperature as it is known in the literature, 0