An Ultrathin Liquid Film Lubrication Theory—Calculation Method of Solvation Pressure and Its Application to the EHL Problem

This paper describes a new method for calculating the solvation pressure that acts between solid surfaces when the surfaces approach each other to within a very small distance in a liquid medium. Solvation pressure is calculated by solving the transformed Ornstein-Zernike equation for hard-spheres in a two-phase system with Perram’s method and using the Derjaguin approximation. Furthermore, the authors apply the new method to the elastohydrodynamic lubrication problem in which the film thickness is very small and solvation force and van der Waals force cannot be neglected. It will be shown that the calculation results agree well with experimental data. The results are then compared with two conventional solvation pressure models proposed so far, namely, Chan and Horn’s model, and, Jang and Tichy’s model. It is found that these two models neglect the elastic deformation of solid surface when obtaining the experimental parameter used in their models; thus they overestimate the solvation pressure resulting in the prediction of larger film thickness than the experiments.