Abstract
The proper surface pressure on the pistons rings in the diesel engine of a ship is very important, because the pressure controls the oil that is needed to maintain friction at acceptable levels between the pistons and the cylinders. In this paper, basic and theoretical concepts to compute the ring pressure were formulated and applied to obtain the proper surface pressures on selected sample piston rings. During the calculation of the pressure on the piston rings, the computation of the accurate free shape of the piston ring was required. Earlier, Arnold and Prescott introduced theories to compute the free shapes of piston rings, and their approach used rectangular and polar coordinates. In this paper, the free shapes of piston rings using two different theories were computed and compared. The results were quite close, representing the free shape of the piston ring. Ring pressure was computed using the Arnold's free shape that was obtained. A simple GUI was made to compute the surface pressure on the piston rings.
