Hydrodynamic lubrication with deterministic micro textures considering fluid inertia effect

• Fluid inertia effect alters the performance of lubricated textured contacts.
• Moreover, performance is affected by variation of texture shape, size and height.
• Less number of textures in transverse direction may give better performance.
• Angular orientation of texture shapes has significant effect on performance.

Although, Reynolds equation is widely used in thin film lubrication, its use in textured surfaces is not fully convincing, especially while operating in moderate to high Reynolds numbers. Fluid inertia which is generally neglected in Reynolds equation becomes significant. Therefore, an attempt has been made to study the lubricating performance of textured parallel sliding contacts considering fluid inertia effect. The modified Reynolds equation is derived from Navier–Stokes equation assuming suitable velocity profiles and retaining the inertia terms, and solved iteratively using finite difference method. The result shows that fluid inertia effect is influential in altering the performance parameters.