COMPUTATIONAL MODELLING OF THE LUBRICATED CONTACT BETWEEN ROUGH SURFACES IN ABAQUS

Marcus Vinicius de Souza Ferraz¹; Flávia de Souza Bastos¹; Sara Del Vecchio²

¹ Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora; ² Instituto Federal Sudeste de Minas Gerais

doi:10.20906/CPS/CILAMCE2017-0767

Resumo

Tribology is an interdisciplinary science dedicated to the study of the phenomena related to wear, friction and lubrication between surfaces in relative motion. This paper consists in the modeling of rough surfaces in contact with a rigid plane, with a separating lubricant between them. The main objective has been to investigate how the lubrication influences contact conditions by means of numerical simulations through the fluid-structure interaction defined by the Arbitrary Lagrangian - Eulerian (ALE) method. At first, is realized a contextualization of the theme based on papers available in the literature, about different lubrication regimes. Then, the mathematical formulations that govern the lubrication process of contacts possibly found in tribological applications are presented, taking into account the Reynolds equations for modeling the film thickness for the lubrication regimes considered. The model was implemented in the program Abaqus®. The simulation is given by the displacement of this rigid plane in the normal direction of the main asperities, so that contact occurs. In addition, it seeks to establish a relative motion between such roughnesses and the plane. The results of an unlubricated model are compared with the results of a model lubricated in terms of tangential stress, normal stress and a ratio between the latter two. Therefore, significant differences in the distribution of stresses in some elements of the model and in the interface of contact between the analyzed pairs are identified through graphic results.

Palavras-chave: Tribology; Lubrication; ALE method; Reynolds equations; Abaqus®