Mechanism of no-wear super-slip design of tribo-pair in load lifting and friction reduction

Abstract

The concept of “super-slip design” is used to investigate the influence of multiple factors on the opening and frictional forces of a tribo-pair with microscale grooves. The results demonstrate that significantly improving the load-carrying capacity and reducing the viscous friction can be simultaneously realised by super-slip modification of the bottom surface of the hydrodynamic groove as a result of the joint action of the super-slip surface, groove geometrical parameters, and operating conditions. This is expected to further enhance the load-carrying capacity and reduce friction by applying shear stress on the interface of the liquid film and superslippery surface of the groove bottom. The superslippery surface does not fail because of rubbing, and the logical relationship between the performance parameters and groove depth changes unusually under this design.