The starvation behaviour of circular and elliptical contacts has been studied and compared numerically. Increasing the ellipticity (decreasing k) increases the resistance to side flow (γ). The oil ejection mechanisms are modified when the starvation degree increases. As starvation increases (r decreases), the relative film thickness reduction increases (γ decreases up to a factor 2 in elliptical contacts). The oil ejection location moves from a single site in the inlet (in fully flooded and moderately starved contacts) to an ejection shared between two sites of similar importance, inlet and outlet, as starvation increases (r decreases). A coupling (stronger for the circular contact case) seems to flatten the γ_(out) profiles, rendering the oil ejection more or less uniform across the contact. This lubrication coupling is an important parameter to understand local lubrication failure. A parameter C describing this coupling is found to depend on the contact operating conditions M and L, the contact ellipticity k, the starvation level r and the lubricant defect width λ_(oil).
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