This work deals with the modeling and simulation of contact between piston rings and liner of an engine. In the engine, the piston-rings are in relative motion with respect to the liner. This mechanism is lubricated and the purpose of this piston-ring system is to control sealing between combustion chamber and lower part of engine, keeping under control lubricant quantity on the surfaces. We modeled this phenomenon using the Elrod-Adams models (P-θ), which are conservative parabolic-hyperbolic models, taking into account the cavitation phenomenon (the presence of gas bubbles in fluid, so that it can be understood a multiphased flow) coupled with the Greendwood-Tripp model, which models the elastic contact by a statistical approach. When we focus on the modeling of the oil flow and asperity contacts, we neglect many physical phenomena like scuffing and thermal effects. In the first part, we focus on the kinematics of the engine, from the design to the different models to describe a lubricated contact. We explain all the simplifications in the engine body and the boundary conditions we use in the cavitation model to solve it as a free boundary problem, in particular for the choice of the flow rate to simulate a ``normal functioning''. In the second part, we describe the algorithm implementation and the required modifications when using real surface topography. We compare several surfaces and study the influence of simulation parameters, then we compare the result with experimental data obtained by Renault company. In the third part, we modify the (P-θ) model, to have the same flow rate in the cavitation zone as in the Navier-Stokes model. It can be studied in 2-dimensions, however we only explain the mathematical study in 1D. We study this model as a dynamical system for which the unknown variables are the free boundaries. The uniqueness is imposed by the addition of an adjustable parameter. The local and global behavior in time are determined by geometrical parameters and boundary conditions. In the last part, we compare the new cavitation model with the P-θ model.
Surface optimization and new cavitation model for lubricated flow