Thermomechanical FE analysis of the engine piston made of composite material with low histeresis

The main purpose of the preliminary analyses presented in the paper was to compare the behaviour of the combustion engine piston made of different type of materials under thermal load. A thermomechanical FE analysis of the engine piston made of composite material was shown. A selected engine is installed in one of the popular polish tanks. The proposed new material is characterized by a low hysteresis – the differences of the coefficient of thermal expansion for heating and cooling are not significant. The results obtained for the piston made of a new material were compared with those for the current standard material. The piston was loaded by a temperature field inside it. Appropriate averaged thermal boundary conditions such as temperatures and heat fluxes were set on different surfaces of the FE model. FE analyses were carried out using MSC.Marc software. Development of the FE model was also presented. Geometrical CAD model of the piston was developed based on the actual engine piston, which was scanned using a 3D laser scanner. A cloud of points obtained from the scanner was processed and converted into a 3- dimensional solid model. FE model of a quarter part of the piston was developed for the preliminary analysis presented in the paper. 4-node tetrahedron finite elements were applied since there was no axial symmetry of the considered object. The temperature field inside the piston was determined and presented in the form of contour bands. Contours of displacement and stress in a radial direction were shown as well.