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Recent trends to downsize engines have resulted in lighter weight and greater compactness. At the same time, however, power density has increased due to the addition of turbocharger and other such means to supplement engine power and torque, and this has increased the thermal and mechanical load. In this kind of environment, corrosion of the copper alloy bushing (piston pin bushing) that is press-fitted in the small end of the connecting rod becomes an issue. The material used in automobile bearings, of which the bushing is a typical example, is known to undergo sulfidation corrosion through reaction with an extreme-pressure additive Zinc Dialkyldithiophosphate (ZnDTP) in the lubricating oil. However, that reaction path has not been clarified. The purpose of the present research, therefore, is to clarify the reaction path of ZnDTP and copper in an actual engine environment.

During engine durability tests (peak power, constant engine speed) conducted in the development process, it has been the case that excessive wear has occurred to the upper surfaces of the piston top ring grooves, despite the fact that contact pressure due to combustion pressure has been low. This has resulted in considerable increases in development man-hours. The research discussed in this paper therefore set out to conduct a factor analysis of wear on the upper surfaces of piston top ring grooves in order to elucidate the wear mechanism in petrol engine for passenger car. This paper will discuss the test method employed in the factor analysis and the mechanism of wear demonstrated by the analysis. First, the form of the wear was analyzed, and rig test methods able to reproduce wear were developed. With regard to the form of wear, both sliding and impact modes were observed. Sensitivity analyses for each form of wear were conducted using rig tests.

The purpose of this research was to predict the amount of wear on exhaust valve seats in durability testing of gasoline engines. Through the rig wear test, a prediction formula was constructed with multiple factors as variables. In the rig test, the wear rate was measured in some cases where a number of factors of valve seat wear were within a certain range. Through these tests, sensitivity for each factor was determined from the measured wear data, and then a prediction formula for calculating the amount of wear was constructed with high sensitivity factors. Combining the wear amount calculation formula with the operation mode of the actual engine, the wear amount in that mode can be calculated. The calculated wear amount showed a high correlation with the wear amount measured in bench tests and the wear amount measured in vehicle tests.

The reduction of engine weight is today a widely used and effective approach to increasing automotive fuel efficiency . However, the realization of weight savings in the engine can increase deformation of the crankshaft and cylinder block, resulting in fretting fatigue of the contact surfaces of the bearing caps and the cylinder block. Although researchers have identified the mechanism of fretting fatigue on the cylinder block, as yet there is no effective method of addressing the issue in the development stage. The research discussed in this paper applied quality engineering methods to investigate a variety of factors considered to influence fretting fatigue in unit test equipment. The results of the study indicated a good correlation between unit tests and actual engine tests. The paper will also discuss analytic methods for obtaining basic materials data, and methods of prediction of fretting fatigue at an early design stage.

The independent bearing cap is a cylinder block bearing structure that has high mass reduction effects. In general, this structure has low fastening stiffness compared to the rudder block structure. Furthermore, when using combination of different materials small sliding occurs at the mating surface, and fretting fatigue sometimes occurs at lower area than the material strength limit. Fretting fatigue was previously predicted using CAE, but there were issues with establishing a correlation with the actual engine under complex conditions, and the judgment criteria were not clear, so accurate prediction was a challenge. This paper reports on a new CAE-based prediction method to predict the fretting damage occurring on the bearing cap mating surface in an aluminum material cylinder block. First of all, condition a fretting fatigue test was performed with test pieces, and identification of CAE was performed for the strain and sliding amount.

The objective of the study was to confirm whether or not it is possible to use the restraint ratio as an evaluation parameter for the thermal fatigue durability of the exhaust manifold. The study revealed that there was a conformity between the thermal fatigue observed in the material experiment and the restraint ratio. The ratio, under certain temperatures, is an effective tool in estimating the thermal fatigue durability of the manifold. An analysis was carried out by regarding the local restraint condition of the exhaust manifold as a spring system. This provided a method where the restraint ratio was reproduced for the manifold under engine operation temperatures of up to 300°C. As a result, the actual restraint ratio can be obtained by performing a relatively simple process. Since the restraint ratios that were calculated correlate with those that were actually measured, quantitative evaluation of thermal fatigue durability using the restraint ratio was found to be possible.