Note the following quotes from the article "Experimental study on the shear thinning effects of viscosity index improver added lubricant by in-situ optical viscometer" by Siyoul Jang* School of Mechanical & Automotive Engineering, Kookmin University 861-1, Jungnung-dong, Sungbuk-gu, Seoul 136-702, Korea (Received April 15, 2003; final revision received June 2, 2003)
Quote:
Many experimental and numerical studies about elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) have been performed on
the assumption of Newtonian fluid. Most published formulas relating the properties such as viscosity, contact velocity, applied load, viscosity-pressure characteristics and elastic modulus in both experimental and numerical investigations predict film thicknesses with the assumption of Newtonian fluid by Hamrock (1994). However, recently developed lubricants show very non-linear behaviors of viscosity-shear rate especially in EHL regime, where high concentrated pressure (1.0 GPa), thin film thickness and large contact velocity (over 105 s-1) occur over the contact area. This is the reason that many VII’s additives for better performance of lubricant against temperature rise in EHL regime make the lubricant film unpredictively thinner at
high shear arte.
Quote:
In this work, optical interferometric measurement of EHL film thickness over the contact area is applied for the verification of load carrying performances of VII added lubricants, because it is possible only with fine resolution of length measurement of ~5 nm scale. Theoretically, higher rolling contact velocity under the same applied load makes the EHL film thickness thicker for Newtonian lubricant without any exemption. However, for shear thinning lubricant such as VII blended lubricant, higher contact velocity under the same applied load makes the EHL film thickness delicately thinner comparing to that of Newtonian lubricant. ... The load carrying capacities of some VII synthesized lubricant are tested and compared with Newtonian lubricant of base oil and it is found that the tested results agree well with theoretical tendencies.