Coupled Model of Partially Flooded Lubrication and Oil Vaporization in an Internal Combustion Engine

Abstract

The cylinder-kit assembly of an internal combustion engine experiences severe conditions during engine operation. The top compression ring, in particular, undergoes extreme stress directly from cylinder gas pressure, inertial and thermal loads. The top compression ring is often the most significantly affected piston ring, and one of the common resultant phenomena is high wear on the ring/bore surfaces. In many previous studies, the modeling of tribological phenomena at the top compression ring/bore region involves hydrodynamic and boundary lubrication, friction and wear. This present work accounts for an additional factor that may affect the piston ring/bore lubrication — the lubricant evaporative effect. A three-dimensional oil evaporative analysis is coupled into the calculation of mixed lubrication in a cyclic engine computation. The presence of the evaporation analysis allows the study of the temperature influence on the piston ring/bore lubrication in addition to its effect on oil viscosity. A prospective application of this model is in diesel engine analysis. Considering the broad operating range of modern diesel fuel injection systems, the injection timing can be made throughout the compression/expansion process. It is well demonstrated that certain areas of fuel injection operation can result in potential adverse consequences such as increased bore wear. A well known example is “bore wall fuel wetting.” Given concerns around the potential for wear-inducing interactions between the fuel injection plumes and the bore wall, we have explored a particular interaction: bore wear in response to an imposed local heating of the bore wall. The simulation result provides valuable insights on this interaction, in which higher bore wear is predicted around bore wall area with locally imposed wall heating.