Dimple patterns design for different circumstances

ABSTRACT The appealing and enigmatic properties of biological surfaces inspire people that a smooth surface is not always the best. Currently, the patterns of microdimples have attracted more attentions since such closed texture cells are supposed to generate hydrodynamic pressure easily. The advanced manufacturing techniques provide precision and freedom for the fabrication of microdimples, which enables the optimisation of dimple geometry and distribution to obtain better tribological performances. Over the past decade, experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of microdimples on various materials under different operating conditions. Analytical models were established to evaluate the hydrodynamic effect of the dimple patterns. The results suggest that the design of dimple pattern following hydrodynamic principle would obtain good tribological performance under high‐speed low‐load conditions; however, for the case of low‐speed high‐load conditions, shallow and small dimples would have more obvious friction reduction effect than those designed based on hydrodynamic pressure generation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.