Simulation of piston ring tribology with surface texturing for internal combustion engines

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Why is it important?

Design of piston rings is a very crucial subject in the field of internal combustion engines. In the present paper, a numerical model is created using the Navier–Stokes equations. Fluid–structure interaction analysis is performed in order to calculate the structural integrity of the ring for several engine operational conditions and texturing patterns. This paper illustrates the hydrodynamic friction force under various surface artificial texturing in terms of spherical and rectangular microdimples. Piston ring stress analysis is also investigated due to gas leakage. Results show a substantial reduction of the friction using rectangular texturing and less reduction using spherical texturing. The rectangular microdimple parameters were considered to obtain a better friction reduction with the following configurations: Hd = 4 µm, ρτ = 0.61, λ = 20 and s = 0.004. Each rectangular texture cell is defined by the dimple depth, Hd; the texture density, ρτ; the dimple aspect ratio, λ; and the relative dimple depth, s.