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A novel ultrasonic viscometer for in-situ applications in engine components is presented. The viscosity measurement is performed by shearing the solid-oil contact interface by means of shear ultrasonic waves. Previous approaches to ultrasonically measure the viscosity suffer from poor accuracy owing to the acoustic miss-match between metal component and lubricant [1]. The method described overcomes this limitation by placing an intermediate matching layer between the metal and lubricant. Results are in excellent agreement with the ones obtained with the conventional viscometers when testing Newtonian fluids. This study also highlights that when complex mixtures are tested the viscosity measurement is frequency dependent. At high ultrasonic frequencies, e.g. 10 MHz, it is possible to isolate the viscosity of the base, while to obtain the viscosity of the mixture it is necessary to choose a lower operative frequency, e.g. 100 kHz, to match the fluid particle relaxation time.

With increasingly stringent legislation controlling vehicular emissions being introduced, efficiency gains in combustion engines continue to be desirable to OEMs. Reducing FMEP provides one such route and with piston-cylinder interactions accounting for around 40% [1 & 2] of a typical engines frictional losses warrants research directed at improvements. Though developments are being driven by numerical techniques, there is still the need for robust experimental data to evaluate these models. One of the measurable parameters which offers a direct link between simulation and ‘the real world’ is lubricant film thickness within the contact. For over half a decade, various techniques have been used to monitor film thickness but can broadly be split into those exploiting the thickness related electrical, optical or acoustical properties of the lubricant.

An essential part of the total parasitic loss in an IC engine is due to the piston ring and liner friction. In this work, a piston ring-liner reciprocating test rig combined with ultrasonic film thickness measurement system was used to understand frictional characteristic of the lubricant that formed in the contact. Two test procedures were carried out for two lubricants with different viscosities. These procedures were a step load increment at a constant speed and a step speed increment at a constant load. The results showed that the piston ring-liner contact was in boundary lubrication regime for low operating speeds at high load. This was consistent with the oil film thickness data. However, mixed lubrication regime was observed for high operating speeds at low loads. The lubricant film thicknesses increased with speed and decreased with load.

The oil film that forms between piston rings and cylinder liners is an essential parameter which influences parasitic loss and emission rates in an internal combustion (IC) engine. Several methods have been used to analyse these thin oil films in the past, however, all these methods have required invasive access to the contact area via a window or a surface mounted sensor in the cylinder wall or liner. This paper introduces a novel approach for the imaging of the piston ring - cylinder contact, non-invasively. A straight beam ultrasonic contact transducer was coupled to the wet-side of the cylinder wall of a motored diesel engine. Ultrasonic waves were propagated through the cylinder wall and reflections from the ring-liner contact were recorded as the piston rings passed over the sensing area.