Tribological effect of piston ring pack on the crankshaft torsional vibration of diesel engine

Abstract

In this article, a mixed lubrication model considering the oil supply quantity and a friction model under dry running condition were developed, in which an elasto-plastic contact model was employed in calculation of asperity contact forces and friction forces instead of the assumption of pure elastic contact. This model was verified to be suitable for calculating the friction forces of piston ring under different conditions on a reciprocating wear tester. The friction forces of piston ring pack were considered as an excitation source to calculate the crankshaft torsional vibration besides the exciting torques of gas pressure in the combustion chamber and inertia forces of reciprocation components. Furthermore, an experiment on a refitted single-cylinder air compressor was conducted to validate the change rule of torsional amplitudes under normal and scuffing failure conditions. The results showed that the friction forces between piston rings and cylinder liner in the mid-strokes under starved lubrication and dry running conditions increase obviously compared with those under fully flooded lubrication condition. It is reasonable to ignore the exciting torques due to friction forces of piston ring pack for calculating crankshaft torsional vibration under normal condition, and the torsional amplitudes at 2.0 order frequency increase obviously under slight and serious scuffing failure conditions. The result of experiment on a refitted single-cylinder air compressor also agrees with the above conclusion about torsional vibration. So, the change in torsional amplitude at 2.0 order frequency can be used as a referenced rule to identify scuffing failure for diesel engine through analyzing the signals of torsional vibration.