Influence of short grooves on hydrodynamic lubrication of textured infinitely long sliders

The influence of geometrical parameters of the short grooves on the hydrodynamic lubrication is studied in this article. Based on Reynolds equation and Jakobsson–Floberg–Olsson cavitation theory, an analytical model is developed to investigate the hydrodynamic lubrication of the short grooves. The study employs a multigrid method to calculate the distribution of hydrodynamic pressure and the average pressure of textured surfaces. The results indicate that the interactions between neighboring short micro-grooves and the end effect on the hydrodynamic pressure should be considered in the process of numerical simulation. There exist the optimum values of horizontal spacing and short micro-groove depth to maximize the hydrodynamic pressure. The average film pressure decreases with the increase in the vertical spacing, but it increases alongside the short groove width. The increase rate of the average pressure declines gradually as the short groove length grows. Therefore, hydrodynamic lubrication performance can be improved by optimizing the geometrical parameters of the short grooves according to operating conditions.