An experimental investigation of piston skirt scuffing: a piston scuffing apparatus, experiments, and scuffing mechanism analyses

Piston skirt/cylinder bore scuffing is one of the main failure mechanisms affecting the life of automotive engines. A piston scuffing apparatus that simulates the relative motion between the piston and the cylinder liner of a typical engine has been designed and constructed to investigate scuffing mechanisms and determine the conditions under which scuffing happens. With this apparatus, the scuffing performance of an aluminum–silicon piston material with a variety of skirt coatings is studied and scuffing mechanisms investigated. The research also explored the influence of the piston skirt surface texture and cylinder bore surface roughness on the cylinder bore–piston skirt contact, as well as the microstructures and morphological features of the surface and the near-surface materials in scuffing.