Numerical multilevel investigation for the evaluation of pressure distribution in ehl circular contacts from film thickness measurements

An analysis of circular contacts under elastohydrodynamic lubrication using a hybrid technique is presented. In particular, attention has been focused on the pressure distribution calculation. A versatile code has been developed to evaluate the pressure distribution starting from three‐dimensional film thickness maps obtained from the analysis of interferometric images. The code has been developed in C++ and is based on the multigrid technique. This hybrid technique has a basic advantage over the full numerical approach in that the pressure is obtained without making any assumptions about the lubricant itself. The main drawback of the method is that high‐resolution interferometric images are required.