Fuel efficiency

Wavefront

Petrol engine

Engineering

Aerospace engineering

Materials science

Automotive industry

Coating

Diesel engine

Automotive engine

Engine efficiency

Internal combustion engine

Mechanical engineering

Thermodynamics

Combustion chamber

Physics

Organic chemistry

Optics

Thermal

Thermal efficiency

Thrust specific fuel consumption

Combustion

Internal combustion engine cooling

Automotive engineering

Composite material

Piston (optics)

Chemistry

Thermal barrier coating

Applied Thermal Engineering

This paper investigates the potential of coated pistons in reducing fuel consumption and pollutant emissions of a 1.6 l automotive diesel engine. After a literary review on the state-of-the-art of the materials used as Thermal Barrier Coatings for automotive engine applications, anodized aluminum has been selected as the most promising one. In particular, it presents very low thermal conductivity and heat capacity which ensure a high "wall temperature swing" property. Afterwards, a numerical analysis by utilizing a one-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics engine simulation code has been carried out to investigate the potential of the anodized aluminum as piston Thermal Barrier Coating. The simulations have highlighted the potential of achieving up to about 1% in Indicated Specific Fuel Consumption and 6% in heat transfer reduction. To confirm the simulation results, the coated piston technology has been experimentally evaluated on a prototype engine and compared to the baseline aluminum pistons. Despite the promising potential for Indicated Specific Fuel Consumption reduction highlighted by the numerical simulation, the experimental campaign has indicated a slight worsening of the engine efficiency (up to 2% at lower load and speed) due to the slowdown of the combustion process. The primary cause of these inefficiencies is attributed to the roughness of the coating.

Numerical and experimental investigation of a piston thermal barrier coating for an automotive diesel engine application