Numerical Simulation on the Lubrication Performance of Surface Textured Piston Rings

Abstract

Surface texturing has been successfully employed in some tribological applications in order to diminish friction and wear. This technology may be used in a piston ring to decrease the friction and wear of the contact between a piston ring and cylinder liner. A numerical simulation of lubrication between a surface textured piston ring and cylinder liner based on the hydrodynamic lubrication theory was conducted. The influence of surface texture parameters on piston ring lubrication performance was obtained by solving the mathematical equations with a multi-grid method. The results show that under the micro-dimple area density of 5%-40% the minimum oil film thickness increases and the dimensionless friction force decreases with the increasing of it. Under the dimple area density of 40%-60%, the minimum oil film thickness and the dimensionless friction force change slightly. Under various dimple area densities the optimum dimple depth at the given working condition in this paper is about 5µm.