The Tribo-Dynamics Performance of the Lubricated Piston Skirt–Cylinder System Considering the Cylinder Liner Vibration

Abstract

The tribo-dynamics performance of the piston–cylinder system is affected by multiple physical fields. The current work presents a novel multiphysics coupling method to model and analyze the lubricated piston skirt–cylinder interface considering the cylinder liner vibration. This method is implemented by coupling multibody dynamics of the crank-connecting rod–piston–cylinder system, the heat transfer of the cylinder and piston, hydrodynamics lubrication on the skirt–cylinder interface, vibration of the cylinder liner, and thermal as well as elastic deformation in the piston–cylinder system together with rheological characteristics of lubricating oil. The proposed method is adopted into a four-stroke gasoline engine to predict its dynamics and tribological characteristics, with the purpose of revealing the influence of cylinder liner vibration on the tribo-dynamics implementation of the piston–cylinder system. The results indicate that increasing the stiffness and damping coefficient of the cylinder is beneficial to suppress the vibration of the system, but it has little effect on the tribological characteristics of the piston skirt–cylinder interface.