A study on the effect of ring pack structure on blowby

TRACK OR CATEGORY

Engine & Drivetrain II

AUTHORS AND INSTITUTIONS

Shu Li1, Xiqun Lu1*, Tao He1, Dequan Zou1,2, Chengkai Zhang1, Renlian Ma1
(1. College of Power and Energy Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin,
150001, China; 2. Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA)
INTRODUCTION

When internal combustion engine (IC) is operating, the gas in combustion chamber flow
into crankcase through the ring pack, and other gas in crankcase will flow into combustion
chamber through the same ring pack. If the latter occurs, it is considered to be reverse blowby.
The oil accumulating in ring pack will be blowed into the combustion chamber by flowing gas. It
not only increases the oil consumption, but also deteriorates the fuel combustion conditions with
the increasing of pollutant in exhaust. As researches show, oil consumption in ring pack has
three ways: oil evaporation, oil throwing and oil blowing. The third one is the major of oil
consumption. Therefore, the reverse blowby through ring pack is the key point to reduce oil
consumption, and needs to be strictly controlled. The gas mass flowing into combustion chamber
can be represented by the reverse blowby through the top ring[1]. Thus, a great deal of attention
is focused on improving reverse blowby through top ring to reduce oil consumption and pollutant
emission. Based on hydrodynamic lubrication model[2], asperity contact model[3] and piston
ring dynamics model, the paper regards high speed four-stroke diesel as object, to analyze
dynamic characteristics of ring pack and calculate blowby[4]. Taking the reverse blowby through
top ring as optimization parameter, different structural parameters in ring grooves are used as
design parameters. After the orthogonal experimental simulation and sensitivity analysis, ring
pack structural parameters can be achieved, which has great effect on the optimization parameter.
ADD MAIN BODY HERE

The path flowing gas change according to the position of ring pack, and blowby has great
effect on pressure in the adjacent ring pack region. This gas pressure load on rings to impact ring
motion situation. Therefore, there is coupling relationship between the piston rings dynamics and
blowby characteristic. Taking the coupling relationship into consideration, a model is established

to calculate blowby and ring pack dynamics, which is on the basis of ring dynamics model. The
model considers the effect of gas pressure in different region on piston ring force.
There are axial force, radial force and moment on cross section of a piston ring. It can be
found that the source of force and moment include: hydrostatic and hydrodynamic oil pressure,
normal pressure due to asperity contact, hydrodynamic and boundary friction, gas pressure, and
ring tension. Ring axial position and twist angle influence gas flow paths and ring radial friction
forces. Ring radial position influence the ring axial friction forces, as well. The equations of
motion in two degrees of freedom (ring axial and radial position) form relation by means of
respective directional friction forces. Ring twist is obtained by the moment balance, and this
moment is coming from ring axial and radial forces[5-7].
The gas chambers are formed in land-liner and ring-groove. Gas flows through these
chambers with the movement of piston ring. The gas pressure in land-liner region is affected by
the pressure of ring-groove region, the upstream and downstream land-liner regions and it also
influences the pressure in ring-groove region with the position of ring pack. The gas has two
ways to flow through ring pack: one is the clearance between land and liner, the other is
clearance between ring and groove[8-9]. The gas flowing governing equations express the
relationship between gas mass flow and pressure derivative in regions. The initial gas pressures
in each region are taken into ring pack dynamics model to analyze the position of rings and
achieve blowby mass flow between adjacent two regions. Then mass flows are taken into
governing equations to calculate new pressures in regions. New pressures take place of initial
pressures to start iterative calculation, until the changing of all pressures in regions meet
accuracy standard.
The blowby model is applied to high speed four-stroke diesel engine. In the calibration
conditions, the pressures and temperatures in combustion chamber are obtained by experiments
measuring cylinder combustion process. The pressure in crankcase is assumed to be atmospheric
pressure as a constant, and its temperature is 50. After simulation using blowby model, it can
be found that the reverse blowby occurs in the later period of work stroke and the early period of
exhaust stroke, which need to be controlled by optimizing the structure of ring grooves.
In the paper, xgb is the distance between the piston top surface and the ring groove bottom
surface, rg is the internal diameter of ring groove, hc is the clearance between piston ring and
cylinder liner, and bg is the axial height of ring groove. The four kinds of parameters can fully
represent structural style of piston ring pack. Their ranges are determined when the ranges have
no effect on structural strength. The study averagely selects three levels within their ranges when
the precision is allowed, which consist of the factor level table. The L27(313) orthogonal table is
selected to arrange 27 groups of simulation, which has the smallest calculation work[10]. As the
optimization parameter, the top ring reverse blowby is as small as possible. It can be directly
seen that the smallest top ring reverse blowby is -1.95066g/s among the 27 groups. However the
27 groups are not full combination simulation, this group probably isnt the best combination.
Through significant analysis, the structure parameters are obtained which have greatest effect on
top ring reverse blowby. The internal diameter of top ring groove rg(1) has greatest effect on top

ring reverse blowby; the distance between the piston top surface and the top ring groove bottom
surface xgb(1) has a significant influence; the clearance between the second ring and cylinder
liner hc(2) and the axial height of the top two ring groove bg(1), bg(2) have a certain effect, and
others have little effect on the results. Through variance analysis, the optimal ring pack structure
parameters combination is achieved. It is verified after carrying out blowby simulation again.
The research work in this study can be used to guide the ring pack design in the future.
REFERENCES

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KEYWORDS

piston ring pack, lubrication, dynamics, blowby