EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES ON THE PERFORMANCE AND EXHAUST EMISSION CHARACTERISTICS OF DIESEL ENGINE USING TEXTURED PISTON RING

Abstract

Petroleum and automotive industries are facing tough time across the globe due to steep rise in petroleum-based fuels’ prices and ever-increasing governments regulations related to improving the fuel economy and lower emissions from the fuel and lubricant system of IC engines. Therefore, worldwide substantial efforts in the design of reciprocating internal combustion (IC) engines are being made by the researchers for improving the fuel economy and reducing the exhaust emissions. Nowadays, great attention is being given on the reduction of friction at the various interfaces formed between the mating components of the IC engines. Effective lubrication at the interfaces of cylinder liner/piston rings, piston/piston rings, and piston skirt/cylinder liner play vital role in achieving high power efficiency, ensuring long operational life of the interfaces, limiting the consumptions of lubricating oil and fuel, providing a good dynamic sealing at various interfaces. Thus, efficient design of contacts formed between piston rings and counter surfaces in piston assembly is a great desirable task in the emerging scenario. For improving the performance of the IC engines several attempts were made. The utilisations of the surface coating and designing techniques were used. For wear and friction properties of piston rings materials were evaluated using the pin on disc method. Apart from wear and friction the vibration amplitude and noise level during the experiments were also evaluated. Similar experiments were performed by considering the surface textures. Laser techniques used to produce the textures. From the pin on disc tests it is reported that coating and texturing both helped in improving the tribological properties. Lastly, the selected textures were fabricated on the actual piston rings and engine performance were evaluated using the IC engines. Using textured piston rings, experiments have been carried out on a commercial diesel engine fuelled with diesel and biodiesel at various loads. Textures on piston ring has made impact on engine’s brake thermal efficiency (BTE), brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC), and emissions, irrespective of fuels used. BTE of engine increased with textured piston ring in comparison to standard (conventional) piston ring with both the fuels. Moreover, significant reductions in exhaust emissions were also recorded with textured face profile on compression piston rings.