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

Noël Brunetière (1) , Arthur Francisco (1)

1 TriboLub - Mécanique des interfaces lubrifiées [Institut Pprime]

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

Mots clés: Rough surfaces; Hydrodynamic lubrication; Multiscale method; Finite element

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Physique Numérique [physics.comp-ph]

Noël Brunetière, Arthur Francisco. Multiscale Modeling Applied to the Hydrodynamic Lubrication of Rough Surfaces for Computation Time Reduction. Lubricants, 2018, 6 (3), pp.83. ⟨10.3390/lubricants6030083⟩. ⟨hal-02316963⟩