Development of a Low Friction Piston with a New Flexible Skirt Structure for a 3.5-L V6 Gasoline Engine

The aim of this study was to develop a piston with a new skirt structure in order to achieve low fuel consumption, high throttle response and reduced engine noise. The features desired for this piston were a skirt shape having optimal low rigidity and an optimum piston pin offset. These characteristics were intended to achieve lower friction while securing the same levels of durability, reliability and quietness as before. Their attainment, which occurred in a shorter development period, was accomplished by using various prediction techniques to develop this new piston, including a CAE (computer-aided engineering) analysis of piston behavior and an analysis of the mechanism of piston skirt deformation that causes piston slap. This piston was applied to the new VQ35DE gasoline engine used on the vehicle.