Enhancing the lubrication performance of the oil films in piston/cylinder pairs by textures

Abstract

The long-term wear of the piston/cylinder pair is the main failure reason for axial piston pumps. In this paper, the dynamics of textured films to enhance the lubrication performance of piston/cylinder pairs is investigated systematically. The oil film is divided into three regions: the head region, the texture region, and the tail region. The Reynolds equation is used to predict the dynamics, which includes the carrying capacity and the friction. Influences of the texture geometries and the working conditions are presented in sequence. The results show that the texture enhances the lubrication performance by the collective effect. A shorter head length and a larger area ratio always benefit the lubrication performance, while increasing the texture region length does not always lead to positive effects, and the cell length is found to have negligible influences. The texture effect is found to be enhanced with larger shearing velocities and to be restrained with higher inlet pressures. It is also shown that the texture is effective for small inclination angles. Furthermore, a one-dimensional model is performed to unravel the mathematical mechanism, and an explicit expression is given for the texture region length.