Effects of 3D anisotropic heterogeneous subsurface topology on film thickness, pressure, and subsurface stresses in an elasto-hydrodynamically lubricated point contact

• Published in: Tribology international 2020-11, Vol.151, p.106471, Article 106471
• Main Authors: Zhang, Binbin, Liu, HaiChao, Quiñonez, Armando Félix, Venner, Cornelis H.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Algorithms; Anisotropic material; Bearing steels; Contact pressure; Contact stress; Contact stresses; Coupled EHL; Crystallography; Elastic anisotropy; Fatigue life; Film thickness; Grains; Microstructure; Multigrid method; Point contact; Rolling contact; Topology
• ISSN: 0301-679X; 1879-2464
• DOI: 10.1016/j.triboint.2020.106471

Bearing steel on a sufficiently small scale is strongly heterogeneous and anisotropic. To enable evaluation of the criticality of particular aspects of the microstructure, in this paper an EHL model is solved by the developed multigrid algorithm for a full 3D elastic domain containing varying anisotropic heterogeneous material. Pressure fluctuations and local stress concentrations occur mostly near the boundaries of grains that have large orientation differences. As a consequence, the crystallographic microstructure may have a significant effect on rolling contact fatigue life unless grains are very small relative to the Hertzian contact. However, to the contrary, the influence of crystallographic microstructure on the film thickness distribution under the considered steady state conditions is very small. •3D Heterogeneous anisotropic material is modeled in EHL point contact problems.•Multigrid techniques are used for solving this coupled 3D problem.•Anisotropic material exhibits different stiffness in the load direction depending on the orientation.•Pressure fluctuations and local stress concentrations occur near the boundaries of grains.•49 cases of granular material are analyzed for the variation of the maximum von Mises stress.