Fluid mechanics of lubricant transport in non-contact regions in the piston ring pack in internal combustion engines

The compromise between friction and lubricant consumption has been a long-lasting challenge for the design of the piston ring pack in internal combustion engines. In order to achieve a satisfactory compromise, a systematic understanding of the lubricant transport in the piston ring pack is of critical importance. In the context of increasingly stringent standards on engine emissions, there is a more urgent need for the knowledge on the lubricant transport. This work is focused on the lubricant transport in two non-contact regions in the piston ring pack: 1) the region near a piston skirt chamfer; 2) the region near a piston third land. While the Reynolds equation has been widely employed to model the contact interfaces, more general fluid mechanics has to be applied in the non-contact regions. This thesis is the first work to comprehensively apply Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and theoretical modelling to the non-contact regions in the piston ring pack.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Fang, Tianshi.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Tian Tian.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122218

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122218