An Analytical Investigation of Visco-elastic Effects in the Lubrication of Rolling Contact

The pressure distribution in the lubricant film separating two cylindrical rollers has been computed for a Newtonian fluid and for a Maxwell fluid. A comparison of the results indicates that shear elasticity can have effects of first-order significance on both the magnitude and form of the pressure distribution function, reducing load-carrying capacity and maximum shear stress in the film by sizeable amounts. The equations for visco-elastic flow are discussed with emphasis on thin films. The integral form in which these equations are applied in this paper is not commonly used in lubrication theory, and, in the estimation of the writer, offers some advantage in other bearing problems particularly when numerical computations are to be used. Presented as an American Society of Lubrication Engineers paper at the Lubrication Conference held in New York, N.Y., October, 1959.