Piston rings for slow and medium speed diesel engines: Aspects of manufacture and performance

Abstract

The manufacture of piston rings for slow and medium speed diesel engines is a strange mixture of art and science whose final arbiter, the engine, is critical in its judgement of success or failure. Piston ring design is a delicate balance of tribology, practice, and manufacturing techniques, yet the piston ring is the least understood of all the components in a diesel engine, and the one most often found in practice to bear the brunt of the development problems of modern highly rated diesel engines. This paper presents a selection of some of the more practically orientated principles of the successful manufacture of grey cast iron piston rings greater than 175 mm in diameter, and shows that when considered with the sciences of strength of materials and diesel engineering, the subject of piston rings is almost an embodiment of the wider subject of tribology