Multiscale Modeling Applied to the Hydrodynamic Lubrication of Rough Surfaces for Computation Time Reduction

This paper presents a multiscale finite element method applied to the simulation of a lubricating film flowing between rough surfaces. The objective of this approach is to study flows between large rough surfaces needing very fine meshes while maintaining a reasonable computation time. For this purp...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Noël Brunetière, Arthur Francisco
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2018-09-01
Series:Lubricants
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4442/6/3/83
Description
Summary:This paper presents a multiscale finite element method applied to the simulation of a lubricating film flowing between rough surfaces. The objective of this approach is to study flows between large rough surfaces needing very fine meshes while maintaining a reasonable computation time. For this purpose, the domain is split into a number of subdomains (bottom-scale meshes) connected by a coarse mesh (top-scale). The pressure distribution at the top-scale is used as boundary conditions for the bottom-scale problems. This pressure is adjusted to ensure global mass flow balance between the contiguous subdomains. This multiscale method allows for a significant reduction of the number of operations as well as a satisfactory accuracy of the results if the top-scale mesh is properly fitted to the roughness lateral scale. Furthermore the present method is well-suited to parallel computation, leading to much more significant computation time reduction.
ISSN:2075-4442