Piston Ring Cavitation and Starvation During Entrainment Motion Reversal

The current paper investigates the correlation between oil film formation, cavitation and starvation during inlet reversal of an Internal Combustion (IC) engine piston-ring conjunction. Piston ring lubrication is critical in the vicinity of Top Dead Center (TDC) and Bottom Dead Center (BDC) where low entrainment velocity leads to very thin films. The current study predicts that cavities formed at the trailing edge of the contact before the entrainment reversal briefly survive at the leading edge after the reversal. This contributes to contact starvation and thinner films than previously thought.