Frictional evaluation of thermally sprayed coatings applied on the cylinder liner of a heavy duty diesel engine: Pilot tribometer analysis and full scale engine test

The piston system accounts for roughly half of the mechanical friction of an internal combustion engine, thus it is important to optimize. Different thermally sprayed cylinder liners were investigated in order to optimize the frictional impact of the contact between cylinder liner and piston ring/piston. A novel tribometer test setup was used to scan through different materials at different running conditions. Two cylinder liner materials showed significantly lower friction than the other tested materials, CrC–NiCr and MMC. All the thermally sprayed cylinder liners were worn significantly less than the reference material. Based on these results a full-scale single cylinder test was performed to validate the results from the rig. Comparing the thermally sprayed cylinder liner MMC with reference cylinder liner the test showed higher friction torque for the MMC cylinder liner except in one case; at low speed and high pressure. An analysis of the results between the tribometer and the engine points at the importance of the ratio between viscous and mechanical friction losses. The most probable cause of higher friction torque for the thermally sprayed coating (MMC) is that the functional surface of the cylinder liner promotes an increase in viscous friction.