Comparative steady-state thermal analysis of standard diesel-engine piston made of three wrought aluminium alloys using finite element method in ANSYS

Abstract

The comparison of the temperature and total heat flux distributions in different aluminium alloys in a standard diesel engine piston was considered. The thermal analysis was done by considering the specification of a ZS1115NM diesel engine using the finite-element-method in ANSYS. The methodology implies designing the piston elements before modelling in Solidworks 2023 software. After modelling, the models were imported into the ANSYS 2024 R1 for the analysis. The materials for the models were AA2218, AA2618 and AA4032, meshed by using the tetrahedron element type with 2.5 mm element size. Applying boundary conditions and thermal loads yielded maximum temperature on top centre of the models’ crown and minimum temperature on the bottom of the models’ skirt. Observation showed that the AA4032 model had a high temperature (446.54 ○ C), low minimum temperature (233.3 ○ C), highest maximum total heat flux (955460 W/ m 2 ) and highest thermal conductivity (155 W/mK) hence making the AA4032 model the best material recommended for the manufacturing of diesel engine pistons. Elevated temperatures result in the expansion of the piston thereby leading to thermal stress, wear and friction against the cylinder walls of the engine. Also, high total heat flux means that the model has the tendency to dissipate heat faster than the others. The numerical consistency check of the results obtained in the ANSYS simulated ones with that of the Solidworks using the AA2618 model was done including validation using similar FEA results from literature. The percentage deviation for the maximum temperature and total heat flux was 0.0022 % and 7.0 %, respectively.