ROUGHNESS EFFECT IN HYDRODYNAMIC LUBRICATION

To estimate the magnitude of the roughness effect on the load carrying capacity, the upper bounds to the absolute mean deviation and the root mean square deviation of a normalized load carrying capacity from the smooth case is obtained for a general one-dimensional problem valid for an arbitrary distribution. It is found that the upper bound depends critically on the behavior of the autocorrelation of the roughness. The result for the mean deviation is illustrated by a slider bearing with plane mean surfaces.