Reiterated homogenization applied in hydrodynamic lubrication

This work is devoted to studying the combined effect that arises due to surface texture and surface roughness in hydrodynamic lubrication. An effective approach in tackling this problem is by using the theory of reiterated homogenization with three scales. In the numerical analysis of such problems, a very fine mesh is needed, suggesting some type of averaging. To this end, a general class of problems is studied that, e.g. includes the incompressible Reynolds problem in both Cartesian and cylindrical coordinate forms. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the method several numerical results are presented that clearly show the convergence of the deterministic solutions towards the homogenized solution. Moreover, the convergence of the friction force and the load-carrying capacity of the lubricant film is also addressed in this paper. In conclusion, reiterated homogenization is a feasible mathematical tool that facilitates the analysis of this type of problem.