On the Stribeck Curves for

Lubricated Counterformal
Dong Zhu
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Sichuan University,
Chengdu 610065, China
Jiaxu Wang
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Sichuan University,
Chengdu 610065, China
Q. Jane Wang
Mechanical Engineering Department,
Northwestern University,
Evanston, IL 60208;
State Key Laboratory of
Mechanical Transmission,
Chongqing University,
Chongqing 400044, China
Contacts of Rough Surfaces
The “Stribeck curve” is a well-known concept, describing the frictional behavior of a
lubricated interface during the transition from boundary and mixed lubrication up to
full-film hydrodynamic/elastohydrodynamic lubrication. It can be found in nearly every
tribology textbook/handbook and many articles and technical papers. However, the
majority of the published Stribeck curves are only conceptual without real data from ei-
ther experiments or numerical solutions. The limited number of published ones with real
data is often incomplete, covering only a portion of the entire transition. This is because
generating a complete Stribeck curve requires experimental or numerical results in an
extremely wide range of operating conditions, which has been a great challenge. Also,
numerically calculating a Stribeck curve requires a unified model with robust algorithms
that is capable of handling the entire spectrum of lubrication status. In the present study,
numerical solutions in counterformal contacts of rough surfaces are obtained by using
the unified deterministic mixed elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) model recently
developed. Stribeck curves are plotted in a wide range of speed and lubricant film thick-
ness based on the simulation results with various types of contact geometry using
machined rough surfaces of different orientations. Surface flash temperature is also ana-
lyzed during the friction calculation considering the mutual dependence between friction
and interfacial temperature. Obtained results show that in lubricated concentrated con-
tacts, friction continuously decreases as speed and film thickness increase even in
the full-film regime until extremely high speeds are reached. This is mainly due to the
reduction of lubricant limiting shear stress caused by flash temperature rise. The results
also reveal that contact ellipticity and roughness orientation have limited influence on
frictional behaviors, especially in the full-film and boundary lubrication regimes.
[DOI: 10.1115/1.4028881]

Keywords: Stribeck curve, friction, elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL), mixed EHL,

flash temperature, roughness effect

Introduction In the mixed lubrication regime as the speed increases, friction

drops drastically due to the increase in lubricant film thickness
Machine elements may often operate in a wide range of operat-
and the reduction of surface asperity contact caused by the
ing conditions that result in a great variation of interfacial friction
enhancement of the hydrodynamic effect. When the interface
mainly due to the change of lubrication status. The Stribeck curve
gradually enters the full-film hydrodynamic or elastohydrody-
is an overall view of friction variation over the entire spectrum of
namic lubrication regime, friction may reach its minimum and
lubrication, including the boundary, mixed, and full-film hydrody-
then slowly rise due to the increase in lubricant shear strain rate in
namic or elastohydrodynamic lubrication regimes. Its concept was
the film. This Stribeck curve concept has now been widely
initialized by Stribeck [1] and further developed by Hersey [2]
accepted, so that it can be found in nearly every tribology/lubrica-
and others in the beginning of the last century, mainly for describ-
tion handbook or textbook, as well as a countless number of
ing frictional behaviors of journal bearings. It has now been
articles and technical papers. Note that today when drawing a Stri-
extended to other types of contact geometry for various engineer-
beck curve one may also use a different parameter for the x-axis,
ing applications. The understanding and utilization of the Stribeck
and the choices include speed, film thickness (k) ratio, and others.
curves have advanced from friction expressions to the division of
lubrication regimes (see Ref. [3]). In recent years, as the mixed
lubrication research has been fast advancing, the Stribeck curve
study has attracted increasingly more attention.
A schematic of the Stribeck curve for journal bearing is
illustrated in Fig. 1, which demonstrates the basic trend of friction
variation as a function of the “Hersey number” (the product of
viscosity and rotational speed divided by the average pressure).
Basically, in the boundary lubrication regime the coefficient of
friction is high and quite constant, and is not significantly influ-
enced by operating conditions such as speed and load. This is
because the hydrodynamic action is negligible or weak and fric-
tion is dominated by the surface and boundary film characteristics.

Contributed by the Tribology Division of ASME for publication in the JOURNAL

OF TRIBOLOGY. Manuscript received June 11, 2014; final manuscript received October
19, 2014; published online November 17, 2014. Assoc. Editor: Xiaolan Ai. Fig. 1 Schematic of the Stribeck curve (from Ref. [11])

Journal of Tribology Copyright V

C 2015 by ASME APRIL 2015, Vol. 137 / 021501-1

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Fig. 2 Measured sliding friction in an EHL circular contact
(from Ref. [9], test conducted by Wedeven Associates, Inc.)
Frictional characteristics of lubricated counterformal contacts
found in many mechanical components have been investigated by
many researchers. Pioneer studies include those by Crook [4], Plint
[5], Johnson and Cameron [6], and others. It has been found that the
measured friction in a lubricant film is usually much lower than that
predicted by a Newtonian fluid model. Therefore, a non-Newtonian
model is certainly needed for friction analyses. The concept of
“limiting shear stress” was then established [5,6] based on experi-
mental results. Further studies by Johnson and Tevaarwerk [7], Bair
and Winer [8], and others indicated that friction prediction should
employ a Maxwell model to describe the non-Newtonian visco-
elastic characteristics of a lubricant and considers lubricant shear
due to both elastic and viscous behaviors under high-pressure and
high-shear transient conditions. Figure 2 shows typical measured
sliding friction curves in a circular contact under full-film EHL con-
ditions (from Ref. [9]). Basically, as the sliding velocity/lubricant
shear rate in the film starts to increase from zero, the friction coeffi-
cient increases linearly but only within a very narrow range; then it
may quickly reach a peak value. This is because the shear stress in
the film could not rise beyond the limiting shear stress, which is a
property of the lubricant and is also a function of pressure and tem-
perature. After reaching its peak, the friction may gradually decrease
due to reduction of the limiting shear stress caused by temperature
increase in the contact zone resulted from heat generation in the film
if the sliding velocity is further increased. Therefore, friction in a
lubricated counterformal contact depends largely on the non-
Newtonian viscous–elastic property of the lubricant that is strongly
influenced by pressure and temperature.
Although friction characteristics in full-film EHL contacts have
been investigated extensively, generating a complete Stribeck
curve is still a challenging task that requires either experimental
or numerical results in an extremely wide range of operating con-
ditions. Also, numerically calculating a complete Stribeck curve
requires a unified mixed lubrication model with robust algorithms
capable of handling the entire spectrum of lubrication status. In
fact, the majority of published Stribeck curves found in various
books and articles are only conceptual (similar to the one shown
in Fig. 1) without real data from either experiments or numerical
simulations. Only a limited number of published studies with real
data are found in the literature, including those recently presented
in Refs. [9–17]. For example, the Stribeck curves for various
journal bearings are given by Lu et al. [10], Wang et al. [11],
de Kraker et al. [12], and others. Note that in Ref. [10], numerical
calculations were compared with experiment data and a good
agreement was achieved; in Refs. [11] and [12], an average
Reynolds equation was employed, and in Ref. [11], a thermal
EHL analysis also conducted. As is well-known, in journal bear-
ings and other conformal contact components, the pressure and
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the shear strain rate are still low, so that the Newtonian fluid
models may still be used for simulating frictional behaviors. Also,
since the contacting area is usually large and rough surface asper-
ity contact deformation small, typically various types of stochastic
model are employed when analyzing rough surface mixed lubrica-
tion. The boundary lubrication friction coefficient is usually
assumed to be a constant determined experimentally.
In concentrated contacts, on the other hand, high pressure is
concentrated in a small contact zone, and shear strain rate is also
high due to very thin lubricant film. Under the circumstances, a
non-Newtonian fluid model is needed as described above. The
Stribeck curves based on ball-on-disk experiments have been pre-
sented by Guangteng and Spikes [13], Zhu and Wang [14], Zhu
[9], and others. However, the curves presented in Refs. [9,13,14]
appear to be incomplete, covering only a portion of the entire
lubrication transition, due to limited ability of test apparatus for
precisely varying the speed in an extended wide range. Calculated
Stribeck curves for line contacts can be founded in the papers
by Gelinck and Schipper [15], Lu et al. [10], and Faraon and
Schipper [16], and those for point contacts by Redlich et al. [17].
Note that a typical calculation method has been described in Ref.
[15], which employs Greenwood and Williamson’s stochastic
model [18] to solve for rough surface contact pressure in mixed
lubrication and Moes’ curve-fitting formula [19] (originally for
smooth surface full-film EHL) to predict the central film thickness
in rough surface EHL contacts. It is assumed that the boundary
lubrication friction coefficient is a constant, determined experi-
mentally, and an isothermal Eyring fluid model is used to evaluate
the hydrodynamic friction due to lubricant shearing in the film. Lu
et al. [10] adopted the above method but the fluid model was
changed to the non-Newtonian viscous–elastic one by Bair and
Winer [8] with a pressure-dependent limiting shear stress. Faraon
and Schipper [16] also employed the same method reported in
Ref. [15] to investigate the effect of starvation on the Stribeck
curve behaviors. Two Stribeck curves with lapped and polished
rough surfaces in a circular contact were calculated by Redlich
et al. [17] based on the assumptions that the rough surface is sta-
tionary in contact with a smooth moving surface, and the lubricant
obeys the isothermal Ree–Eyring fluid model. However, for some
reasons, the predicted boundary lubrication friction in Ref. [17] is
even lower than that of mixed and full-film lubrication with the
polished surface. Most recently, Masjedi and Khonsari [20]
improved the stochastic mixed EHL model in Ref. [15] to include
the effects of temperature rise and possible elastic–plastic defor-
mation of asperities. Also, a more accurate free-volume model is
employed and the limiting shear stress effect is considered for the
lubricants. In the meantime, Chang and Jeng [21] also conducted a
friction model development under mixed EHL condition. However,
no sufficient results were presented in Refs. [20,21] for a complete
Stribeck curve. A study by Wang et al. [22] conducted the mixed
EHL analyses using separated lubrication and asperity contact mod-
els, and the results indicated that this separate treatment may yield
reasonable film thickness and pressure in a local average sense for
operating conditions corresponding to the film thickness (k) ratio no
less than 1 and for surfaces with small roughness. The central film
thickness error could reach 50% or more if the k ratio smaller than 1
and the composite RMS roughness greater than 0.4 l.
In the last 10–15 years, fast advancing computer technologies
and updated numerical methods have fueled recent development
in the field of mixed lubrication research. One of the developed
new models is the unified deterministic mixed EHL model by
Zhu and Hu [23], Hu and Zhu [24], with the semisystem approach
presented by Ai [25]. With this approach, one can now use three-
dimensional (3D) digitized machined roughness as input data and
simulate the entire transition from the full-film and mixed EHL all
the way down to boundary lubrication and dry contact under
severe operating conditions. This unified model has been continu-
ously improved by Wang et al. [26], Liu et al. [27], Zhu [28], and
others. Its model validation cases have been given in
Refs. [23,24,28–32]. This unified mixed EHL model and the
Transactions of the ASME
 corresponding numerical approach offer a chance to explore the
entire transition in a wide range of operating conditions. Based on
this model, Wang et al. [29] conducted friction simulations for
rough surface point contacts with four different rheological
models, and the speed range in Ref. [29] covered more than four
orders of magnitude. They found that the four different rheologi-
cal models involved actually yielded similar friction results. How-
ever, the thermal effect was still neglected in Ref. [29]. Actually,
with this unified mixed EHL model, the ranges of operating condi-
tions can be even more greatly extended. For instance, in recently
published papers [14,33], the analyzed cases were in a speed range
of nearly 11 orders of magnitude, from U* ¼ 0.9113  1020 up to
U* ¼ 0.4557  109, and the corresponding film thickness ratio
range from 0.0008 to 3.5 or so. Therefore, it may be a numerical
tool to conduct an in-depth study on the frictional behavior of
lubricated concentrated contact interfaces and generate more com-
plete Stribeck curves accordingly.
The present study employs the above-mentioned deterministic
mixed EHL model recently developed and enhanced [23,24,26,28].
Stribeck curves are plotted in a further extended wide range of speed
based on the full numerical solutions of film thickness obtained with
various types of contact geometries using 3D machined rough surfa-
ces of different orientations. The non-Newtonian viscous–elastic
fluid model by Bair and Winer [8] is used for evaluation of friction
in the lubricant film. Surface flash temperature is also analyzed dur-
ing the calculation of friction because of the mutual dependence
between friction and interfacial temperature. Obtained results will
be discussed for a better understanding of friction characteristics
and the influences of operating conditions, contact geometry, and
surface roughness orientations on the Stribeck curve behaviors.
Basic Equations and Numerical Procedure
The basic approach for the deterministic mixed EHL simulation
model and its improvements has been presented in previous
publications, such as Refs. [23,24,27,28]. Its details will not be
repeated here but a brief summary is given in the following for clarity
and completeness. The present study focuses on the mixed EHL prob-
lems in counterformal contacts, for which the Hertzian contact zone
is either an infinitely long narrow band (line contact) or an ellipse (el-
liptical contact). Generally, two arbitrary rough surfaces are running
through the EHL conjunction at any rolling and relative sliding veloc-
ities. The two rough surfaces can be directly digitized and then used
as a part of the input data. The pressure (including both the
“hydrodynamic” pressure and “contact” pressure) within the entire
domain is governed by the Reynolds equation expressed as follows:
   
@ qh3 @p @ qh3 @p u1 þ u2 @ ðqhÞ @ ðqhÞ
þ ¼ þ ðð
@x 12g @x @y 12g @y 2 @x @t
(1)
Here, the lubricant can be either Newtonian or non-Newtonian (if
non-Newtonian, g should be the effective viscosity with respect to
a certain shear behavior of the lubricant used; readers may refer
to Refs. [23,24] for more information). All the parameters are
defined in the Nomenclature. The x-coordinate is chosen to coin-
cide with the rolling direction. A boundary condition of pressure
p ¼ 0 at the edges of the solution domain, as well as a normal cav-
itation condition, must be satisfied when solving this equation.
It is important to note that, in principle, we are using a unified
model to deal with both “lubrication” and “contact” simultane-
ously in a mixed EHL system. In fact, dry contact is nothing but a
special case of lubricated contact under some extreme conditions,
such as ultra-low viscosity, ultra-low speed, and localized high
pressure. In other words, dry contact can be theoretically consid-
ered the same as lubricated contact under the condition of suffi-
ciently weak or negligible hydrodynamics. Therefore, one should
be able to use the lubrication model (i.e., the Reynolds equation)
to solve dry contact problems as long as the numerical solver is
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sufficiently robust. In addition, when plotting rough surface pro-
files usually the asperity height is greatly exaggerated for clarity,
but in reality, the average roughness height, Ra, is typically in a
range of 0.02–0.8 l and the asperity wavelength/size often in the
order of 50–100 l or more for machined roughness commonly
seen in practice. Therefore, the asperity slope is actually small,
usually not more than several degrees in most cases. This type of
roughness is called the “Reynolds roughness” in the literature
that allows the usage of the Reynolds equation. Also, if possible
lateral and reverse flows are considered, any local asperity
contact will not violate flow continuity. Hence, the unified deter-
ministic mixed lubrication model is fully justified and it has
been employed and validated in many previous studies, such as
Refs. [14,22–24,27–36].
For a point contact EHL problem with two moving rough surfa-
ces, the local lubricant film thickness is time-dependent and can
be computed by
x2 y2
hðx; y; tÞ ¼ ho ðtÞ þ þ þ Vðx; y; tÞ þ d1 ðx; y; tÞ þ d2 ðx; y; tÞ
2Rx 2Ry
(2)
Note that the first term on the right-hand side represents the nor-
mal approach between the two bodies, and the second and third
terms are for the original macrocontact geometry. V(x, y, t) is the
surface elastic deformation, and d1(x, y, t) and d2(x, y, t) are 3D
original roughness profiles for surfaces Nos. 1 and 2, respectively.
Since both surfaces are moving along the x-direction, d1 and d2,
are time-dependent, and can be given by
d1 ðx; y; tÞ ¼ s1 ðx  u1 t; yÞ
(3)
d2 ðx; y; tÞ ¼ s2 ðx  u2 t; yÞ
where s1(x,y) and s2(x,y) are surface profiles, typically in the form
of measured discretized roughness height data matrix. For line
contact problems, even the macrocontact geometry can be consid-
ered as two-dimensional (2D), the entire problem still needs a 3D
model because the roughness topography is usually 3D in nature.
Detailed description of 3D line contact EHL model can be found
in Ref. [34], in which Eq. (2) can be written as
x2
hðx; y; tÞ ¼ ho ðtÞ þ þ Vðx; y; tÞ þ d1 ðx; y; tÞ þ d2 ðx; y; tÞ (4)
2Rx
The surface elastic deformation due to pressure is computed
through the following integral:
2 pðn; 1Þ
Vðx; y; tÞ ¼ 0 qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffidnd1 (5)
pE X
ðx  nÞ2 þ ðy  1Þ2
The lubricant viscosity is assumed to be dependent on pressure, and
one of the commonly used viscosity equations is the exponential law
g ¼ go expðapÞ (6)
Other viscosity laws can also be used here to readily replace Eq. (6)
when necessary. Detailed discussion on the effect of different vis-
cosity models is beyond the scope of the present paper. In fact, it
has been found by Wang et al. [29] that different viscosity models
may yield similar results for the predicted friction. The density of
lubricant is also a function of pressure, commonly calculated by
 
0:6  109 p
q ¼ qo 1þ (7)
1 þ 1:7  109 p
The applied load is balanced by the integral of the pressure
over the entire solution domain, X, i.e.,
APRIL 2015, Vol. 137 / 021501-3
 ðð
wðtÞ ¼ pðx; y; tÞdxdy (8)
X can calculate the shear stress at the asperity contact locations
It is important to note that in the present study the distributions of
mixed EHL film thickness and pressure are obtained through the
full numerical solution of the above equation system, Eqs. (1)–(8),
with the isothermal Newtonian fluid model, because the EHL film
thickness is dominated by the entraining action in the inlet zone
where the pressure and shear strain rate are still low so that the use
of an isothermal Newtonian model is justified and the effects of
thermal action and non-Newtonian behavior are usually limited.
That is why the isothermal Newtonian EHL solutions have shown
good agreement with available experimental results, and today, the
majority of researchers are still using this type of models for evalu-
ating EHL film thickness and pressure. The full thermal solution
with a non-Newtonian fluid model, on the other hand, may require
a significant increase in computational power, which is not neces-
sary in many cases. However, the flash temperature increase and
sliding friction occur mainly in the contact zone where the pressure
and shear strain rate are very high. Therefore, a non-Newtonian
fluid model is needed, and the thermal effect should be considered
when predicting frictional characteristics. Experimental results
have indicated that EHL friction is often much overestimated if a
Newtonian fluid model is used (see Refs. [4–8], for example). That
is why in the present study we are following the common practice
to employ the isothermal Newtonian model for EHL film thickness
and pressure distributions but a thermal non-Newtonian model for
flash temperature and friction in order to obtain reliable results with
a reasonable computing time.
The mixed lubrication friction is considered as the sum of
hydrodynamic friction in the areas of surface separation by the
lubricant films and boundary film friction at the locations of asper-
ity contact. Its calculation method has been described in some pre-
vious papers such as Refs. [35–37], so its details will not be
repeated here. Note that the shear stress in the lubricant film is
estimated in the hydrodynamic areas by using the non-Newtonian
viscous-elastic fluid model by Bair and Winer [8] expressed as
:   dn
: s sL s 
c¼  ln 1  (9)
G1 g sL
in which the limiting shear stress, sL, and the limiting shear elastic
modulus, G1, are functions of pressure and temperature, which
can be estimated empirically. For a typical mineral oil, the follow-
ing empirical formulae by Dyson can be employed;
1:2p
G1 ðp; TÞ ¼  109
2:52 þ 0:024T (10)
sL ðp; TÞ ¼ 0:25G1
Assuming the lubricant shear strain rate can be approximately
calculated by
: (13) and (14), are recognized as Volterra’s integral equations of the
c ffi ju2  u1 j=h
one can have
 
u ds sL s ju2  u1 j
  ln 1   ¼0 (11)
G1 dx g sL h very low. However, at low speeds, the heat generation is usually in-
Then, the shear stress distribution in the film, s(x,y), can be
obtained by solving the above nonlinear equation at each node of
the computational mesh with an iterative procedure, and, once
again, the shear stress will not exceed sL. In other words, the shear
stress in the film is, in fact, no longer calculated based simply on
the viscosity unless the shear strain rate is extremely low so that the
Newtonian model still holds. The coefficient of boundary friction,
fb, in the asperity contact regions is assumed to be a constant that
can be experimentally measured. Generally fb varies often in a nar-
row range, e.g., 0.07–0.15, for mineral oil lubricated steel against
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steel commonly seen in engineering practice. If the fb is given, one
s ¼ fb p (12)
The total friction can then be obtained through the integration
of shear stresses over the entire domain that includes both the
hydrodynamic and asperity contact areas. One may refer to
Refs. [35–37] and some other papers for more detailed description
of the friction calculation. Note that this friction calculation
approach has been validated with some ball-on-disk test data (see
Refs. [14] and [29], for example).
Since the lubricant properties are influenced sensitively by the
temperature, and the temperature is directly affected by the heat
generation due to friction, surface temperature and friction are in
fact mutually dependent. Assuming the bulk temperature of the
contacting bodies reaches a stable equilibrium condition after a
certain period of running time, the transient surface flash tempera-
ture increase becomes more crucial in the friction calculation.
There are different ways available for evaluating the flash temper-
ature under different conditions, as discussed in detail by Liu
et al. [38], but we must choose a unified approach for the
extremely wide range of operating conditions, otherwise the gen-
erated Stribeck curves may be discontinuous. In the present study,
the calculation of flash temperature is based on the theory of a
moving heat source over a semi-infinite solid. Basically, when the
surface speed is sufficiently high, the heat flow along the surface
in the direction perpendicular to the velocity of heat source may
be neglected. Also, the heat generated at the interface will be car-
ried away by the two moving solid bodies through conduction.
The convection by the lubricant flow is assumed to be insignifi-
cant. Based on these assumptions, the surface flash temperatures
can be calculated by solving the following equations (refer to
Refs. [37,38] for more detailed descriptions):
 0:5 ð f  
1 kf qðnÞ
T1 ðfÞ ¼ Tb1 þ ½T2 ðnÞ  T1 ðnÞ þ
pq1 C1 u1 k1 x h 2
(13)
ðf  nÞ0:5
 0:5 ð f  
1 kf qðnÞ
T2 ðfÞ ¼ Tb2 þ ½T1 ðnÞ  T2 ðnÞ þ
pq2 C2 u2 k2 x h 2
dn
 (14)
ðf  nÞ0:5
where q is the heat generated by either lubricant shear in the hydro-
dynamic areas, or interface friction in the asperity contact areas. It
can be estimated as q ffi s ju2  u1j, in which s is from either Eq.
(12) or the solution of Eq. (11). Note that the above equations, Eqs.
second kind. Since the surface temperatures and the heat generation
are mutually dependent, an iterative procedure is needed in order to
solve them for surface temperatures, T1 and T2. Note that this flash
temperature model is satisfactory when the surface velocities are
high. It may not be perfectly accurate if the surface velocities are
significant and the corresponding flash temperature rise is very low
anyway (see flash temperature calculation examples given below).
Therefore, possible calculation errors at low speeds should not
have any significant influence on the basic trend of flash tempera-
ture variation. After all we have to choose a unified model for the
flash temperature in the wide range of operating conditions.
The numerical solution techniques based on the semisystem
approach (see Ref. [25]) have been described previously in
Refs. [23,24,27,28] and some other publications. The unified
lubrication-contact approach employs the same equation system
consistently in both the hydrodynamic and contact regions. In
Transactions of the ASME
 Fig. 3 Three types of machined rough surfaces used (from Ref. [33])

accuracy [28]. For line contact problems with 3D surface rough-

ness, the mixed FFT approach is employed, which is described in
Refs. [34,40]. When solving mixed EHL problems with machined
roughness, the handling of discretization meshes and the resulting
numerical accuracy become crucial. The appropriate algorithm
has been discussed in detail in a recent paper by Zhu et al. [41].

Input Data for Analyzed Cases

Fig. 4 Four types of contact geometry analyzed (from Ref. [33]).
The greater the contact ellipticity, the less the lateral flows, and
the stronger the entraining action in the direction of motion.
order to accelerate the surface deformation calculation, which is a
major part of the total computation process, the discrete convolu-
tion and fast Fourier transform method developed by Liu et al.
[39] is incorporated into the EHL model mentioned above by
Wang et al. [26], and the computation using this set of numerical
procedure has been proven to be very fast. The progressive mesh
densification method is employed to ensure a reasonable and
efficient mesh-converged solution with satisfactory numerical
Because the primary objective of this paper is to numerically
simulate the entire transition from the full-film and mixed EHL
all the way down to boundary lubrication, and to investigate the
frictional behaviors in the form of Stribeck curve, a series of cases
have been chosen with different types of surface roughness orienta-
tions and different contact ellipticity ratios in a wide range of
speed, but otherwise under the same operating conditions. Three
types of machined rough surfaces used in the present study are
illustrated in Fig. 3, representing the major roughness orientation
patterns relative to the rolling direction: longitudinal, transverse,
and isotropic. It can be seen that the topography of a turned surface
consists of either longitudinal or transverse ridges with a rather
consistent wavelength, while the shaved surfaces have more ran-
dom asperities without any apparent direction. In each case, two
rough surfaces of the same type and the same RMS roughness are
running through the EHL zone, having their original composite
RMS roughness fixed to r ¼ 600 nm. Four different types of con-
tact geometry are selected with the ellipticity parameters of k ¼ 0.5,

Fig. 5 A set of deterministic solutions at k 5 2 Showing the entire transition U *5 0.9113 3 10220  0.4557 3 1026,
W *5 0.5478 3 1024, G *5 2829.7, Ph 5 2.277 GPa, S 5 20%, r 5 600 nm, and k 5 0.00086  75.16

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 Table 1 Materials properties used

Effective Young’s modulus E0 226.37 GPa Lubricant conductivity kf 0.145 W/(m  K)

Ambient viscosity go 0.0262 Pa  s Solid conductivities k1, k2 46.0 W/(m  K)
Pressure–viscosity exponent a 12.5 GPa1 Solid specific heats C1, C2 0.46 Nm/(g  K)
Solid densities q1,q2 7.865 g/cm3 Composite roughness r 600 nm

1.0, 2.0, and 1 (line contact), respectively, as shown in Fig. 4. Cor-
responding effective radii of curvature are Rx ¼ 36.13 mm and
Ry ¼ 12.70 mm for k ¼ 0.5, Rx ¼ Ry ¼ 12.70 mm for k ¼ 1.0,
Rx ¼ 12.70 mm and Ry ¼ 36.13 mm for k ¼ 2, and Rx ¼ 12.70 mm
and Ry ¼ 1 for the line contact. The material properties used are
listed in Table 1. The applied load is adjusted to have a consistent
maximum Hertzian pressure of 2.277 GPa for all the cases with the
different contact ellipticity ratios.
Note that when solving the Reynolds equation for film thick-
ness and pressure distributions the lubricant is assumed to be
Newtonian and the solution of the Reynolds equation is isother-
mal. The boundary lubrication friction coefficient is assumed to
be constant, fb ¼ 0.10. In order to simulate the entire transition
and explore the possible Stribeck curve behaviors to the fullest
extent, the rolling velocity varied from 0.000001 mm/s continu-
ously up to U ¼ 50,000 m/s (which already exceeds those of usual
machine elements in engineering reality), covering nearly 14
orders of magnitude. However, the slide-to-roll ratio remains con-
stant, which is S ¼ 20%. This means that the higher the rolling
speed, the higher the relative sliding. The solution domain for
the point contact cases is defined as 1.9  x/a  1.1 and
1.5  y/b  1.5. Similarly, the domain for the line contact cases
is set to 1.9  x/a  1.1 and 1.5  y/a  1.5. The discretization
grid is 257  257 equally spaced, corresponding to a

Fig. 6 Flash temperature results for surface 1 corresponding to the solutions in Fig.5 U* 5 0.9113 3 10220  0.4557 3 1026,
W* 5 0.5478 3 1024, G* 5 2829.7, Ph 5 2.277 GPa, S 5 20%, r 5 600 nm, and k 5 0.0008675.16. (a) Contour maps of flash temper-
ature increase on surface 1 and (b) maximum flash temperature rise as a function of speed.

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 Fig. 7 Summarized results for the cases of k 5 2 with transverse roughness U *5 0.9113 3 10220  0.4557 3 1026,
W *5 0.5478 3 1024, G *5 2829.7, Ph 5 2.277 GPa, S 5 20%, r 5 600 nm, and k 5 0.00086  75.16

dimensionless mesh size of Dx/a ¼ Dy/b ¼ 0.0117 (or Dx/a ¼ Dy/
a ¼ 0.0117 for line contacts), which is sufficiently small for the
present study. The time step length is chosen to be DT ¼ Dt U/
a ¼ 0.0053. The solution convergence criterion is set to be:
ep ¼ RjPnew old new
i;j  Pi;j j= RPi;j < 0:00005  0:0005 for rough sur-
face solutions and eP < 0.000005 for smooth surface solutions.
Results and Discussions
Globally stabilized transient full numerical solutions are
obtained from the present mixed EHL model after running a large
number of time steps for each case (specifically, 500 steps in the
present study). A set of numerical solutions for the contact ellip-
ticity of k ¼ 2 with the transverse roughness are given in Fig. 5 as
examples, visually demonstrating the predicted entire transition of
lubrication status when the speed parameter U* varies from
0.9113  1020 up to 0.4557  106. As a result, the k ratio spans
a wide range from 0.00086 up to 75.16. Note that the light-yellow
colored areas in the contact zone indicate asperity contacts, where
the film thickness, or gap, falls below 0.50 nm. For comparison
purpose, the corresponding smooth surface EHL solution at
U ¼ 50 m/s is also given on the right side of Fig. 5. It is obvious

Fig. 8 Contact load ratio and friction coefficient as functions of film thickness ratio (k) for various types of contact geometry
(transverse roughness)

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 Fig. 9 Friction coefficient as functions of speed for various types of contact geometry and roughness orientation
that as speed increases the lubrication mode gradually changes
from the boundary and mixed to the full-film EHL. Each lubrica-
tion mode corresponds to a certain k ratio range, and this has
recently been discussed in detail in Ref. [14]. The flash tempera-
ture results for the same set of cases are given in Fig. 6, showing
that significant surface temperature rise occurs only at moderate
and high speeds.
The variations of film thickness (k) ratio, contact load ratio and
friction coefficient as functions of the rolling speed are plotted on
the left in Fig. 7, clearly showing the lubrication status change as
the speed increases. The same set of contact load ratio and friction
results are replotted on the right side of the figure as functions
of k ratio. This set of results is typical, demonstrating basic
characteristics of the lubrication transition and frictional behavior
over the extremely wide ranges of operating speed and k ratio.
Obtained solutions for other contact types and roughness orienta-
tions are similar in nature, which will be discussed later.
Note that the analyzed sample cases have covered the entire
transition of lubrication condition, and, in fact, the operating
speed has been greatly extended in order to investigate the trend
of Stribeck curve for the full spectrum of lubrication condition,
especially at high speeds. It is observed that as the speed increases
the friction coefficient continuously decreases even in the full-
film EHL regime until the extremely high speeds are reached.
This is mainly because the lubricant limiting shear stress is a
function of temperature in lubricated concentrated contacts (as
indicated by Eq. (10)), which is significantly reduced when the
surface flash temperature rises at high speeds. Note that in the left
graph of Fig. 7, the dashed line is for the friction coefficient
obtained from the same model but without considering the effect
of flash temperature rise on the limiting shear stress. It can be
021501-8 / Vol. 137, APRIL 2015
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seen that friction could be much higher and more leveled at high
speeds if the flash temperature is not considered. Basically, the
Stribeck curve looks different from that for conformal contacts
found in journal bearings and some other components, in which
the pressure and shear strain rate are so low that the lubricant can
still be considered as a Newtonian fluid with a constant viscosity
without considering the limiting shear stress. Here, the contact
load ratio Wc 0.85 is used as the criterion for boundary lubrica-
tion, while Wc ¼ 0 is considered to be that for full-film lubrication.
Basically, obtained Stribeck curves shown in Fig. 7 demonstrate
typical characteristics described above.
All the simulation results of friction and contact load ratio
variations vs. film thickness (k) ratio for the four types of contact
geometry with transverse roughness have been summarized in
Fig. 8. First, the line contact cases are analyzed by using the 3D
mixed EHL model recently developed by Ren et al. [34] in order
to take into account the effect of 3D roughness commonly found
in engineering applications. This figure reveals that all the Stri-
beck curves for different types of contact geometry demonstrate
similar characteristics described previously. The friction continu-
ously deceases as the speed or film thickness increases until
extremely high speeds reached. The influence of contact ellipticity
appears to be quite limited.
In order to investigate the effect of surface roughness
orientation on the friction, different surfaces are employed in the
numerical analyses under otherwise the same conditions. All the
obtained Stribeck curves have been summarized in Figs. 9 and 10.
Apparently, surface roughness orientation does not seem to have a
significant influence on the frictional behaviors, especially in the
boundary and full-film lubrication regimes. Visible but limited
influence can be observed in the mixed lubrication regime where
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 Fig. 10 Friction coefficient as functions of film thickness ratio (k) for various types of contact geometry and roughness
orientation
the roughness orientation has more significant effect on the aver-
age film thickness, as discussed in detail in Ref. [33].
Conclusions
A systematic numerical investigation of the friction character-
istics in lubricated concentrated contacts is conducted using the
unified deterministic mixed EHL modeling system recently
developed. Digitized 3D machined rough surfaces are adopted,
representing three types of major roughness orientations: longi-
tudinal, transverse, and isotropic. Four types of contact geome-
try, including the line contact and the point contacts of three
different ellipticity ratios, k ¼ 2, 1, and 1/2, are analyzed at the
same maximum Hertzian pressure, and the rolling speed range is
greatly extended in order to study the frictional behavior during
the entire transition from the boundary, mixed, up to the full-
film EHL. The corresponding k ratio spans a wide range from
75 to 90 or so down to about 0.0008. Based on the obtained nu-
merical simulation results, the following conclusions can be
drawn:
(1) The deterministic mixed EHL model can be used to evaluate
the interfacial friction characteristics for various types of rough
surface in concentrated contacts and generate complete Stribeck
curves in an extremely wide range of operating conditions.
(2) The friction coefficient continuously decreases as the speed
and film thickness increase even in the full-film regime
until extremely high speeds are reached. This phenomenon
may be different from that in conformal contacts found
in journal bearings and some other components, in which
friction may increase in the full-film lubrication regime due
to high shear strain rate (see Fig. 1). Such a difference is
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mainly because in concentrated contacts, where the pres-
sure and shear strain rate are usually much higher, the lubri-
cant demonstrates non-Newtonian behaviors and its
limiting shear stress may continuously decrease due to the
significant surface flash temperature rise as the speed
increases.
(3) Contact ellipticity and surface orientation have limited
influences on the frictional behaviors, especially in the full-
film and boundary lubrication regimes.
Acknowledgment
The present study was partially supported by NSFC (National
Science Foundation of China) Project 50735008 and 51175521.
The supports from the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at
Sichuan University, China, and State Key Laboratory of Mechani-
cal Transmission at Chongqing University (0301002109162),
China, and the Center for Surface Engineering and Tribology at
Northwestern University, are also acknowledged.
Nomenclature
a ¼ semi-axis of Hertzian contact ellipse in rolling direction,
or radius of Hertzian contact circle, or half-width of
Hertzian zone for a line contact
b ¼ semi-axis of Hertzian contact ellipse in the direction
perpendicular to rolling
C1,C2 ¼ specific heats of body 1 and body 2, respectively
E0 ¼ effective elastic modulus
f, fb ¼ friction coefficient and boundary lubrication friction
coefficient, respectively
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 G* ¼ aE0 , dimensionless material parameter
h ¼ local film thickness (or gap)
ha ¼ average film thickness (or average gap) calculated within
half radius from the center of normalized Hertzian
contact zone
k ¼ b/a, Hertzian contact ellipticity
kf ¼ conductivity of lubricant
k1,k2 ¼ conductivities of body 1 and body 2, respectively
le ¼ effective length of line contact
p ¼ pressure
Ph ¼ maximum Hertzian pressure
Rq ¼ root mean square (RMS) surface roughness
Rx,Ry ¼ effective radii of curvature in the x- and y-directions,
respectively
S ¼ (u2  u1)/U, slide-to-roll ratio
T1,T2 ¼ surface temperatures on body 1 and body 2, respectively
u1, u2 ¼ velocities of surface 1 and surface 2, respectively
U ¼ (u1 þ u2)/2, rolling velocity (or entraining velocity)
U* ¼ goU/(E0 Rx), dimensionless speed parameter
w ¼ load
W* ¼ w/(E0 R2x ) for point contact, or w/(E0 Rxle) for line contact,
dimensionless load parameter
Wc ¼ contact load ratio (load supported by asperity contacts
divided by total load)
x,y ¼ coordinates (x is chosen to be parallel to rolling
direction)
a ¼ pressure–viscosity exponent used in viscosity equation
g ¼ go exp(ap)
g,go ¼ viscosity and viscosity under ambient condition,
respectively
k ¼ ha/r, film thickness ratio, or k ratio, or specific film
thickness
q,qo ¼ density and density under ambient condition,
respectively
q1,q2 ¼ densities of body 1 and body 2, respectively
r ¼ (R2q1 þ R2q2 )0.5, composite RMS roughness
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