Improving Tribological Behavior of 2-Stroke Marine Diesel Engine Piston Ring by Cylinder Liner Surface Texturing

Piston ring lubrication in some types of low-speed 2-stroke marine diesel engines is completely different from those in medium-or high-speed diesel engines since the inner surface of cylinder liners are textured with circular grooves in macro-scale and honing texture in micro-scale. In this paper, a numerical model has been developed to study the potential of use of cylinder bore surface texturing, in the form of circumferential oil grooves with different dimensions and densities, and their efficiency to improve the tribological properties of piston ring-cylinder liner tribo-system. The average Reynolds equation has been employed in the area of micro-scale texture and the effect of macro-scale grooves has been incorporated to improve the currently lubrication model. The results showed that the cylinder liner oil grooves can efficiently be used to maintain hydrodynamic effect. It is also shown that optimum surface texturing may substantially reduce the friction losses between piston ring and cylinder liner.