The purpose of this paper is to clarify the shoe dimensions required to improve the lubrication characteristics on sliding surfaces between shoe and swash plate in a compressor. The steady incompressible flow between shoe and swash plate was numerically simulated by finite volume method and Newton-Raphson method. The calculation results were compared with experimental ones measured by optical interferometry. The oil film thicknesses were successfully predicted with boundary condition imposed mass imbalance for the volume called dimple in sliding surface. It was found that the pressure in dimple consorted with the load acting on the shoe, and that optimizing the outer profile height and profile peak radius, increasing the sliding surface radius and decreasing the dimple radius effectively increased minimum oil film thickness.
