Viscoelastic Response of Elastohydrodynamically Lubricated Compliant Contacts below Glass-Transition Temperature.

The widespread use of polymers in the high-performance engineering applications brings challenges in the field of liquid lubrication in order to separate the rubbing surfaces by the coherent fluid-film thickness relative to not only the inelastic material response of the polymers. The determination of the mechanical properties by the nanoindentation and the dynamic mechanical analysis represents the key methodology to identify the viscoelastic behavior with respect to the intense frequency and temperature dependance exhibited by polymers. The fluid-film thickness was examined by the optical chromatic interferometry on the rotational tribometer in the ball-on-disc configuration.