Abstract
The friction loss between piston rings and cylinder liner is due to the tension of the piston rings. Lubricant is usually supplied to reduce the friction. However, the sliding speed of the piston varies during the reciprocating cycle and is very low near TDC(Top Dead Center)/BDC(Bottom Dead Center), where the hydrodynamic lubrication cannot be sustained. Since the lubrication regime is shifted from the hydrodynamic to the boundary lubrication near TDC/BDC, wear particles are easily generated so that the friction loss becomes bigger and bigger due to the plowing effect of wear particles. In this study, for the purpose of reducing the friction loss, an undulated surface is adopted to the cylinder liner to trap wear particles. The friction force variations, which are measured by strain gaged, show that the concept of undulated surface is one of the promising methods to effectively reduce the friction between piston rings and cylinder liner.