Compressible Lubrication Flows in Non-Concentric Cylinders at Supercritical Pressures

We employ an analytical approach to approximate the load and loss generated by high speed lubrication flows of pressurized gases between non-concentric cylinders. The flows are taken to be two-dimensional, steady, laminar, compressible and single-phase. While the load and loss for ideal gases are functions of eccentricity only, these global parameters are found to also depend on the density dependence of the bulk modulus and shear viscosity when the pressures and temperatures are on the order of those at the thermodynamic critical point. When the speed number is large, we find that the load will increase and the loss will decrease with pressurization.