Influence of wall slip on the hydrodynamic behavior of a two-dimensional slider bearing

In the present paper, a multi-linearity method is used to address the nonlinear slip control equation for the hydrodynamic analysis of a two-dimensional (2-D) slip gap flow. Numerical analysis of a finite length slider bearing with wall slip shows that the surface limiting shear stress exerts complicated influences on the hydrodynamic behavior of the gap flow. If the slip occurs at either the stationary surface or the moving surface (especially at the stationary surface), there is a transition point in the initial limiting shear stress for the proportional coefficient to affect the hydrodynamic load support in two opposite ways: it increases the hydrodynamic load support at higher initial limiting shear stresses, but decreases the hydrodynamic load support at lower initial limiting shear stresses. If the slip occurs at the moving surface only, no fluid pressure is generated in the case of null initial limiting shear stress. If the slip occurs at both the surfaces with the same slip property, the hydrodynamic load support goes off after a critical sliding speed is reached. A small initial limiting shear stress and a small proportionality coefficient always give rise to a low friction drag. The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10421002, 10332010), the National Basic Research Program of China (2006CB601205), and the Science Research Foundation of Liaoning Province (20052178). The English text was polished by Yunming Chen.