On the Effects of Homogeneous Reynolds Roughness in a Two-Dimensional Slider Bearing With Exponential Film Thickness

The effects of rough surfaces on the performance of a two-dimensional slider bearing with a mean exponential film thickness is investigated using the Reynolds equation, whose application requires the aspect ratio of the bearing to be large and the amplitude and the characteristic frequencies of the roughness to be considerably smaller than a representative film thickness (all are dimensionless). This problem has been previously considered by Sun using a straightforward perturbation approach; here, a formulation due to Keller is adopted and we make explicit use of h₀/l<<1, where l is the bearing length and h₀ is a representative film thickness. It is shown that neglecting terms of 0(h₀/l), the load enhancement is maximum and positive for a transverse surface roughness; and it is minimum and negative for a parallel surface roughness. In these two extreme cases, both load enhancements depend on the statistics of the surface only through its mean square and are exactly predicted by Christensen’s theory.