Modeling Engine Oil Vaporization and Transport of the Oil Vapor in the Piston Ring Pack of Internal Combustion Engines

A model was developed to study engine oil vaporization and oil vapor transport in the piston ring pack of internal combustion engines. With the assumption that the multi-grade oil can be modeled as a compound of a number of distinct paraffin hydrocarbons, a set of equations governing the oil vapor density variations were derived by applying mass conservation law to the amount of oil vaporized from the piston and the amount of oil vapor transported within the piston ring pack.

The model was applied to a heavy-duty diesel engine. First, the case with the maximum oil supply to all the piston regions was studied. The results showed that, under this condition, the oil consumption from piston vaporization alone was far greater than the typical oil consumption value measured in the engine. Then, to show the contribution of oil vaporization to oil consumption and the dependence of vaporization on oil supply to different regions, different lubrication conditions for the high temperature regions of the piston were studied.

Finally, a liquid oil transport model was integrated with this oil vaporization model in order to investigate the change of oil composition on the crown land with each engine cycle, and the contribution of liquid and vapor phases to the total oil consumption under a fixed liquid oil supply to the crown land.