Flow factor modeling of combustion engine ring and cylinder components in mixed hydrodynamic lubrication

Abstract

This work employees the modification of the Reynolds equation for computational efficiency by analyzing rough surfaces in the hydrodynamic flow regime through the use of flow factors. This analysis is aimed towards modeling the surface interactions and pressure variations across power cylinder components of an internal combustion engine, namely the piston ring and cylinder wall. The Patir and Cheng equations are for general surfaces that accounts for the overall effect of roughness and anisotropic structure. However, rough surfaces are not fully characterized by these two parameters and therefore the aim of this paper was to provide flow-factors specific to the cross-hatched cylinder liner surfaces and piston ring interface. These interacting surfaces were measured directly through the use of a profilometer. Average flow factors are derived via full deterministic solution of the Reynolds equation over rough surfaces to model the pressure and shear variations relative to smooth surfaces. These flow factors can then be used to consider the effect of roughness in lubrication problems without deterministically modeling roughness.