Running-in wear modeling of honed surface for combustion engine cylinder liners

The texture change during running-in alters the performance and efficiency of a tribo-mechanical system. During mass production of cylinder liners, a final finishing stage known as plateau honing is commonly added to reduce the running-in wear process of the liner surface. The majority of researchers think that this operation improves the engine efficiency and decreases oil consumption. It was believed that there are close links between the surface topography of honed cylinders change and their wear resistance during running-in. However, these interactions have not yet been established. Some running-in wear models were developed in the open literature to predict topographical surface changes without considering the running-in conditions. The present paper thus investigates the various aspects of the wear modeling that caused running-in problems in honed surfaces and its implications on ring-pack friction performance. To illustrate this, plateau honing experiments under different conditions were first carried out on an instrumented vertical honing machine. The plateau honing experiments characterize the surface modifications during running-in wear of cast-iron engine bores using advanced characterization method. Based on the experimental evidence, a running-in wear model was developed. Finally, a numerical extension of the developed model was applied to solve the Reynolds equation by taking into account the real surface topographies of the engine bore. This enables us to predict realistic friction performance within the cylinder ring-pack tribosystem. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.