High power diesel marine propulsion engines are subject to long working periods as well as harsh operation conditions. Due to the extraordinary requirements in service and operation, these engines must sustain a long operation life cycle, reliability and availability.
In ship diesel engines, wear usually occurs in the top region of the cylinder liner, where the maximum mechanical and thermal load appears. Modern high pressure direct fuel injection engines (i.e. common rail and pump injector systems) in combustion with high rate turbo charging increases the combustion temperature, pressure and flame propagation. Additionally to this extreme thermo mechanical and pressure load, the top region is superimposed by abrasive wear mechanism, due to the high quantity of abrasive particles and carbon depositions on the pistons surface, occurring by the combustion of heavy fuels and oil degradation. Therefore the thermo mechanically and tribologically highly loaded top region are subjected to a premature local cylinder damage. This leads to the necessity of a reinforcement of the highly loaded areas by means of advanced materials engineering.
At the IMTCCC, together with the leading Spanish marine engine manufacturer IZAR, an investigation is being developed, in order to obtain a carbon deposition reducing coating insert by means of HVOF thermal spray techniques