Title: A stable numerical strategy for Reynolds-Rayleigh-Plesset coupling,
Abstract: The coupling of Reynolds and Rayleigh-Plesset equations has been used in
several works to simulate lubricated devices considering cavitation. The
numerical strategies proposed so far are variants of a staggered strategy where
Reynolds equation is solved considering the bubble dynamics frozen, and then
the Rayleigh-Plesset equation is solved to update the bubble radius with the
pressure frozen. We show that this strategy has severe stability issues and a
stable methodology is proposed. The proposed methodology performance is
assessed on two physical settings. The first one concerns the propagation of a
decompression wave along a fracture considering the presence of cavitation
nuclei. The second one is a typical journal bearing, in which the coupled model
is compared with the Elrod-Adams model.