Bio-Based Lubricants for Numerical Solution of Elastohydrodynamic Lubrication

This paper presents a numerical solution of elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) problem in line contacts which is modeled through an infinite cylinder on a plane to represent the application of cylindrical roller bearing. In this work, the contact between roller element and raceway of outer ring of the cylindrical roller bearing is simulated using vegetable oils as bio-based lubricants. Temperature is assumed to be constant at 40°C. The results show that the EHL pressure for all vegetable oils was increasing from inlet flow until the center, then decrease a bit and rise to the peak pressure. The shapes of EHL film thickness for all tested vegetable oils are almost flat at contact region.