Interactive computer graphics and volumetric visualization for EHD lubrication of point contacts

0A user friendly interactive computer graphics model to investigate heavily loaded lubricated circular and non-circular (elliptic) contacts has been developed. The model contains a pre-processor to allow the user to input the material, lubricant properties, etc., into the numerical elastohydrodynamic (EHD) lubrication solver. The EHD solver was developed by Kim and Sadeghi (1), (2) to investigate the pressure, temperature and film thickness distribution within the heavily loaded rolling/sliding contacts. the post-processor allows the user to completely investigate the relative magnitude and location of critical performance parameters. The graphics application uses volumetric visualization technique to provide the utmost inflexibility and interactivity. This paper provides a description of the computer graphics package and a sample of the results.