Influence of boundary conditions on starvation of piston ring conjunction

It is important to determine realistic inlet boundary conditions to correctly predict lubricant film thickness and generated frictional power losses in all tribological conjunctions. This is also true of piston compression ring as well. A 2D hydrodynamic solver using Reynolds equation is to analyse the differences between predicted conditions with a flooded inlet and that arising from a more realistic determined zero-reverse boundary condition for lubricant flow post inlet wedge stagnation point. The case of a cylinder of a 4-cylinder 4 stroke gasoline engine, running at the engine speed of 1500rpm is considered. The results show that with a more detailed and realistic inlet boundary a significant reduction in the minimum film thickness is predicted which leads to increased friction throughout the engine cycle.