Torsional Stress Measurement on Valve Springs of a Heavy Duty Engine in Collaboration with Valve Lift

The intake and exhaust valve spring of a 12.7L heavy duty diesel engine was instrumented with torque/shear rosette type strain gages to measure torsional stresses applied on the springs under different engine operating conditions. The engine was tested with no load, partial load and full load conditions and the effect of engine brake switch loading operation on the springs is investigated. Additional measurement of the valve lift motion and the peak fire pressure values from exactly the same cylinder were conducted to better understand the exact timing of the forces applied on the spring. This study gave an insight to the design engineer to determine the dynamic safety margin of the spring under permissible torsional stress values and optimize the material type of the spring accordingly. Another achievement is to measure any possible unpredictable torsional stress values occurred during engine operation when the engine brake is turned on/off and correlate the CAE model.