Piston rings cause significant friction losses within internal combustion engines. Especially the first compression ring, which is pressed onto the liner by high cylinder pressure, contributes significantly to the total friction loss of the piston assembly. The tribological behavior of the oil scraper ring is mainly related to the pretensioning force and can lead to high losses even at low and idle speed. Due to this, there is always a markable risk of wear for the contact surfaces of the piston rings and the cylinder. “Diamond-like carbon” coatings on the surface of the piston rings can prevent wear and are able to reduce friction in the ring-liner-contact. The purpose of this work was to investigate the tribological benefit of this coating-system on the compression and oil scraper ring. Experimental studies were carried out on a fired single-cylinder engine using the Indicated Instantaneous Mean Effective Pressure-method (IIMEP) for the crank angle-resolved detection of the piston assembly’s friction force. To be able to determine the component-related fractions of the friction loss and to quantify the hydrodynamic and asperity related parts locally and time dependent, an EHD/MBS model of the engine was created in AVL EXCITE and a simulative investigation was performed. This simulation was validated by the experimental work and provided detailed information about the individual contact conditions and gap height of each tribological contact of the piston group. The combined approach of measurement and simulation enabled the prediction of tribological aspects and performance in parameter studies on a virtual engine test bed.

Tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) is studied as a tribological coating for the valve train's exhaust camshaft of a combustion engine. The coated camshafts were installed in a non-fired engine, tested in a computerized component test bench under practice-relevant conditions and analyzed for their frictional behavior. A notable reduction of the valve train's drive torque on the test bench is demonstrated. Namely, on a roller cam system with ta-C-coated camshaft the reduction is about 15% in average within the entire engine-map. The ta-C coatings were extensively characterized under laboratory conditions before and after the investigations on the test bench. Mechanistic understanding of the tribological behavior of ta-C coatings under dry or starving lubricated conditions was achieved by atomistic simulations of the tribological contact. Industrial utilization of these results would lead to a significant increase of the energy efficiency of combustion engines.

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Internal combustion engines are increasingly regulated in regard to efficiency and environmental impact, which requires advanced optimization strategies of engine components. The contact between the top ring and the cylinder liner is critical to the efficiency of an internal combustion engine. As shown in a previous study, an amorphous carbon coating can greatly improve the friction properties of piston rings. This work expands on these results by fabricating laser‐interference‐induced microchannels on the coating perpendicular to the direction of movement with a mean depth of 0.97 and 3.13 μm spatial period to further optimize the tribology. Fired single‐cylinder engine measurements of the microtextured rings show a significant reduction in mean piston assembly friction of 5% for operation points that are relevant for urban transportation and up to 10% for specific operation points. Subsequent multibody elastohydrodynamic simulations prove that measured friction changes result from the compression ring microtexture. In particular, the microtexture increases the hydrodynamic pressure, reduces hydrodynamic losses, and leads to 20% lowered compression ring losses for an entire combustion cycle of the investigated operation point. In the future, such tribological concepts can be deployed in internal combustion engines that are powered by sustainable hydrogen or methanol.

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