This paper presents a study of the spinning influence on film thickness and friction in EHL circular contacts under isothermal and fully flooded conditions. Pressure and film thickness profiles are computed with an original full-system finite element approach. Friction was thereafter investigated with the help of a classical Ree–Eyring model to calculate the longitudinal and transverse shear stresses. An analysis of both the velocity and shear stress distributions at every point of the contact surfaces has allowed explaining the fall of the longitudinal friction coefficient due to the occurrence of opposite shear stresses over the contact area. Moreover in the transverse direction spinning favors large shear stresses of opposite signs, decreasing the fluid viscosity by non-Newtonian effects. These effects have direct and coupled consequences on the friction reduction that is observed in the presence of spinning. They are expected to further decrease friction in real situations due to shear heating.

This article presents a new test rig named Tribogyr and the first results obtained so far. This device allows EHL friction tests in rolling-sliding under high spinning conditions applied to large-size circular contacts. Spinning is imposed thanks to a unique design that includes a tilting facility of one of the two spindles. After a brief description of the test rig structure and of the specimen geometry, the sensor's implementation and the device capabilities are reported. The parameter used to quantify the spin in this study is then defined. It only takes into account the rotational speed normal to the contact surface and the contact radius. Then, the friction coefficient and the temperature measurements are presented. The data are at first plotted versus the classical slide-to-roll ratio and compared to numerical results obtained with and without spin. The spin parameter then is introduced to replace the slide-to-roll ratio as the varying parameter. This representation allows reporting all the results in the same figure, where the influence of the operating conditions like the entrainment speed, the tilting angle, and the slide-to-roll ratio on friction and on temperature is much more visible. It is discussed that the observed temperature difference increase is generated by an additional shearing introduced by spinning despite an observed reduction of friction.

This paper presents a study of the spinning influence on film thickness and friction in EHL circular contacts under isothermal and fully-flooded conditions. Pressure and film thickness profiles are computed with an original Full-System FEM approach. Friction was thereafter investigated using a classical Ree-Eyring model to calculate the longitudinal and transverse shear stresses. An analysis of both the velocity and shear stress distributions at every point of the contact surfaces has allowed explaining the fall of the longitudinal friction coefficient. Moreover in the transverse direction, spinning favors large shear stresses of opposite signs, decreasing the fluid viscosity by non-Newtonian effects. These effects have direct consequences on the friction reduction that is observed in presence of spinning. They are expected to further decrease friction in real situations due to shear heating.