Numerical modeling of lubrication of piston ring of two-stroke marine diesel engine considering the effect of multi-scale grooves on the cylinder liner

Abstract

The method of lubrication for piston ring in some types of low-speed two-stroke marine diesel engines is completely different from those in medium- or high-speed diesel engines since the inner surface of cylinder liners are textured with elliptical grooves in macroscale and honing texture in microscale. In this paper, a numerical model has been developed to study the potential of use of cylinder bore surface texturing, in the form of circumferential oil grooves with different dimensions and densities, to improve the tribological properties of piston ring–cylinder liner tribosystem. The average Reynolds equation has been employed in the area of microscale texture and the effect of macroscale grooves has been incorporated to improve the currently lubrication model. The focus is put on cavitation formation condition and boundary condition in grooves within the area of lubrication, analysis of the effect of macrogroove dimension characters and distribution of grooves on the tribological performance of piston compression ring. The solution provides the hydrodynamic friction force, boundary friction force, coefficient of friction, and the total friction force. The results show that the cylinder liner oil grooves can efficiently be used to maintain hydrodynamic effect. It is also shown that optimum surface texturing may substantially reduce the friction losses between piston ring and cylinder liner.