Trajectory of a Ringless Piston within the Cylinder of an Internal Combustion Engine with a Crosshead Design

A theoretical analysis is presented for calculating the trajectory of a ringless piston within the cylinder clearance of an I.C. engine with a crosshead design. The flexible polytope unconstrained minimization method is used to find the equilibrium between the piston rod structural elasticity and the gas-film hydrodynamics at the piston-cylinder interface. It was found that even when the crosshead bearing is not concentric with the cylinder (i.e., there is an initial eccentricity between the piston and cylinder centerlines), the piston does not touch the cylinder wall during an engine cycle. However, this happens only when a carefully designed piston skirt profile and piston rod length and diameter are used.