Wear Prediction in Internal Combustion Engine Valve Materials

In internal combustion engine valves, wear often develops at the interface of the valve seat and the insert as a result of the high pressures produced by the combustion process at the moment of the closing event. An alternative to study the wear is by carrying out experimental tests in specific wear testing machines. The main drawback is that they are time consuming and expensive due to the need to carry out many tests for the usually observed scatter in the results. In the area of numerical methods, the wear simulation has been widely developed in the last years because it can solve complicated time consuming problems with general geometries.

The aim of this work is to characterize the wear rate coefficients for bi-metallic pairs commonly used in internal combustion engine valves using experimental results and numerical solutions by using the Finite Element Method. Then, a numerical valve model is provided to demonstrate that the numerical and experimental solutions are in agreement.