Geometry design and optimization of piston by using finite element method

Abstract

The piston performance may be impacted by piston geometry, stress, temperature and deformation applied. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the changes of piston performance with different piston head designs. Besides, the piston is optimized by using topology optimization to remove excessive material. The study was carried out by using the dimension of a piston based on the cylinder of a spark ignition engine. The four piston head designs are flat-top piston, bowl piston, square bowl piston and dome piston. All four piston designs were modelled by using Solidworks. Static Structural and Steady State Thermal Analysis in ANSYS Workbench were used to analyze the piston performance. The measured parameters are stress, deformation and temperature distribution. Next, optimization of piston was done by using topology optimization to identify non-essential parts that can be removed. The optimized piston design was analyzed. The findings for the original and optimized piston geometries were tabulated to make comparison. It is found that bowl piston has lower stress, deformation and temperature. The stress, deformation and temperature of optimized piston is lower than original piston. The mass of optimized piston is about 5 percent lesser than the original piston.