Interfacial fluid flow for systems with anisotropic roughness

Abstract: I discuss fluid flow at the interface between solids with anisotropic roughness. I show that for randomly rough surfaces with anisotropic roughness, the contact area percolate at the same relative contact area as for isotropic roughness, and that the Bruggeman effective medium theory and the critical junction theory give nearly the same results for the fluid flow conductivity. This shows that, in most cases, the surface roughness observed at high magnification is irrelevant for fluid flow problems such as the leakage of static seals, and fluid squeeze-out.