The development of a wear resistant hard-metal tappet in diesel engines

Diesel engines have many sliding parts with solid body contact. For example, a piston-ring and a cylinder bore, a valve and a valve-seat, a cam and a valve tappet. These parts have a severe wear problem. during engine life times. During these times, the valve tappet has abnormal wear such as scuffing and pitting due to a high hertzian contact stress between the cam and the tappet. Excessive wear problems frequently occur to both the cam and the tappet. To solve these problems, we developed an advanced wear resistant tappet. The developed tappet consisted of a hard-metal wear part and a steel body. To increase a bonding strength, those two parts, were directly bonded to each other. Also to decrease a bonding temperature, we developed the composition of Ni-binder materials in the hard metal. To estimate the wear characteristics of the newly developed tappet, we performed wear tests and engine dynamo tests in order to compare them with a conventional Fe-base tappet. As a result, the newly developed tappet has better wear characteristics than those of the conventional tappet. In addition, we performed a 100,000km field-test, and the newly developed tappet showed much improved wear resistance.