Mass Conserving Elastohydrodynamic Piston Lubrication Model With Incorporated Crown Lands

This paper describes a comprehensive model of Elastohydrodynamic piston lubrication, incorporated the crown lands into solution domain to characterize the effect of crown-liner interactions on piston motion. Elastohydrodynamic Lubrication (EHL) analysis of a piston skirt-liner conjunction is in general a useful methodology for design analysis of pistons. The diameters of piston crown lands are much less than those of skirt and liner for typical piston designs. Therefore crown lands normally do not interact with liner under usual operating conditions and hence most of the researchers exclude crown lands from the EHL analysis and mainly focus on piston skirt. However, under some of the engine operating conditions piston crown lands play important role in the secondary dynamics and tribology aspects of pistons. During the thermodynamic cycle when piston is hot and cylinder liner is relatively colder, piston thermal expansion leads to crown-liner interaction, which necessitates EHL, asperity contact and wear considerations of piston crown along with piston skirt. The simulation methodology for piston EHL analysis uses a mass-conserving algorithm for the finite volume method solution of Reynolds equation, which is coupled to elasticity relations and Greenwood-Tripp asperity contact model. Elrod’s mass conserving algorithm enables to model and analyze partially lubricated piston-liner interface by the input of oil supply and moreover rigorously handles cavitated zones, and takes into account piston ring grooves, piston cut-outs and unlubricated areas due to piston geometry. Results are presented from parametric studies that show comparisons between the analyses of the models with piston skirt lubrication only and piston lubrication, which incorporates the crown lands to the EHL domain.