On the shape of the lubricant film for the optimum performance of a longitudinal rough slider bearing

Efforts have been made to study the optimum film profile for a longitudinally rough slider bearing. The roughness of the bearing surface is modelled by stochastic random variable with non‐zero mean, variance and skewness. The governing differential equation for lubricant pressure is the Reynolds equation which is stochastically averaged with respect to the random roughness parameter. The method of infinitesimal is used to determine the optimum lubricant film profile. Results for the step location, step height ratio and the bearing performance characteristics, such as load carrying capacity of the bearing, centre of pressure, frictional force and coefficient of friction for different values of α, σ and ε, are numerically computed and tabulated. It is observed that the parameters α, σ and ε characterizing the surface roughness of the bearing affect the bearing performance characteristics significantly.