A study on highly-loaded contacts under dry lubrication for gear applications

The experimental results show that under dry lubrication coated contacts can have significant improved tribological performance compared to uncoated contacts. However, the tribological performance is not comparable with highly-loaded lubricated contacts. The theoretical results based on a parametric study show that the thermal conductivity and the modulus of elasticity of the coating have the strongest effect on the contact temperature and the von Mises stress distribution, respectively.