Study on the effects of the textured surface to improve the performance of cylinder block/valve plate interfaces

This paper discovers how the surface texture of micro-dimples impacts the tribological performance of the interface between cylinder block and valve plate. For this, a mathematical model which considers the cavitation effect for calculating oil film pressure and oil leakage is established. The radius of the micro dimples is considered for studying the influence of the pressure field and the leakage flow. Then a simulation model is built up according to the mathematical model. Meanwhile, a particular test rig was designed and established to verify the theoretical results. Both simulation and experimental results show that a good designed surface texture of micro-dimples could improve the lubrication performance a lot and the structure parameters could be optimized. The leakage flow of the port plate pair will be greatly decreased by micro dimples and it is positive correlated with the radius of the micro dimples. (c) 2019 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).