A textured surface with oil inflow and outflow function designed for starved lubrication

This study presents a surface, referred as ‘pocket-textured surface’, which combines traditional surface texture with the oil storage pocket that can improve the tribological performance of line contact under extremely starved lubrication conditions. The pocket-textured surface has up to 48% lower friction coefficient than the untextured surface with the same little lubricant supply. Tribological experiments were carried out to explore the tribological behavior of pocket-textured surfaces with different ratios of texture hole depth and oil pocket depth under different loads and sliding speeds. In addition, a high-speed camera observed the lubricant inflow and outflow, and Ansys simulation calculated the deformations and pressures of the pocket-textured surface. •A textured surface with oil pocket was designed and fabricated.•The textured surface showed superior tribological behaviors under starved lubrication.•The textured surface could pre-wet contact area and amplify the effects of oil storage.