A Study on the Numerical Analysis of Fluid Film Lubrication by the Boundary-Fitted Coordinates System : Fundamental Equations of DF Method and the Case of Incompressible Lubrication

Abstract

A new method of direct numerical calculation for the fluid film lubrication problem is presented in this paper. The present method is derived by applying the boundary fitted coordinates system to the divergence formulation (DF) method. The present method makes it possible to deal with an arbitrary configuration of a lubricated surface, so the disadvantage of the DF method compared with the finite element method is solved. The present method has the following advantages : (1) An arbitrary configuration of a lubricated surface can be calculated. (2) Computer programing is easy. (3) The scale of computer program and cpu time are small, so calculation by a personal computer is possible.