Applied Thermal Engineering 119 (2017) 312–318

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Research Paper

Finite element analysis of thermo-mechanical conditions inside

the piston of a diesel engine
X.F. Liu a,b,⇑, Y. Wang a, W.H. Liu c
a
School of Energy and Environment, Anhui University of Technology, 243002, PR China
b
Key Laboratory of Metallurgical Emission Reduction & Resources Recycling, Ministry of Education, Anhui University of Technology, 243002, PR China
c
College of Aerospace Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 200016, PR China

h i g h l i g h t s

Empirical model for determining the boundary conditions.

The relationship between the life and stress are subjected to Arrhenius model.

Piston’s fatigue life under acceleration test condition is gained.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, we present our theoretical investigations on thermo-mechanical conditions inside the pis-
Received 18 November 2016 ton of a diesel engine. For the theoretical analysis, the operational parameters of such piston, semi-
Revised 18 February 2017 empirical formula and empirical model were employed to determine the boundary conditions such as
Accepted 10 March 2017
temperature and stress fields. Using the finite element method (FEM), the stress loading and fatigue life
Available online 16 March 2017
were calculated. Based on the available experiment data, the used empirical formula and models can be
improved well. Furthermore, the harsh conditions were simulated using the FEM, and the results were
Keywords:
verified using the accelerated life testing. Moreover, the relationships between the piston life and stress
Simulation test
Finite element method
under the thermal load, mechanical load, and thermal-mechanical coupling conditions were established
Reliability based on the above simulated data. The results showed that in different thermal, mechanical, and
thermal-mechanical coupling conditions, their relationships obeyed Arrhenius model, Inverse power
law model, and Generalized Eyring model, respectively.
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction very importance, however, as a long life, high reliability product;

The damage of one component often leads to the failure of
entire engine, so the reliability of engine has become a focus of
attention. As an important part of engine, the main function of pis-
ton is to form combustion chamber with cylinder liner and cylinder
head, to withstand the explosion pressure when gas burns, and to
output work outwardly through connecting rod and crankshaft. On
the one hand, performance of the piston has a direct impact on per-
formance of engine, on the other hand, the piston is subjected to
high thermal and mechanical loads, and the cyclic variation of
thermal and mechanical stress seriously affects the fatigue life of
the piston. The fluctuation of temperature also affects the proper-
ties of materials obviously [1,2]. The piston’s reliability to engine is
⇑ Corresponding author at: School of Energy and Environment, Anhui University
of Technology, 243002, PR China.
E-mail address: xfliu2002@163.com (X.F. Liu).
lots of reliability tests on piston may spend a large sum of man-
power and resources. However, the accelerated life test can reduce
the test time [3].
The basic idea of accelerated life test is to impose higher level
stress (such as thermal stress, mechanical stress, and electrical
stress) than normal on the test product to accelerate the failure
process and shorten test time, then use acceleration model to eval-
uate the reliability feature of the products under normal condition.
Classified by loading methods of stress, accelerated life tests
mainly contain constant stress accelerated life test, step-stress
accelerated life test, progressive stress accelerated life test and
step-down-stress accelerated life test [4]. Philipp [5] studies the
model of constant stress accelerated life test and statistical analy-
sis methods such as graph analysis method, least square method
and Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE). Bugaighis [6] com-
pares MLE with BULE (Best Linear Unbiased Estimation) to analyze
the accuracy and obtains the conclusion that the former method

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2017.03.063
1359-4311/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 X.F. Liu et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 119 (2017) 312–318 313

has a better estimation performance. And the impact of various there is no determined formula or method to impose boundary
censoring modes (fix-time, fix-number) on MLE is discussed. Guan conditions of the piston temperature field. Empirical and semi-
[7] makes a unified description on Bayesian method of constant empirical formulas are usually used to determine the boundary
stress accelerated life tests with various types of truncation in conditions mostly at present.
exponential distribution. Step-stress accelerated life test has the
advantage of high efficiency and researchers have noticed it. Nel- (1) Heat transfer coefficient of piston crown
son [8] carries out the residual analysis of step-stress accelerated
life test; Wang [9] validates CEM and other models. Since the combustion process of diesel engine is very complex,
Although accelerated life test can greatly improve the verifica- although researchers have studied heat transfer characteristics in
tion speed of engine components’ reliability, most of the overload cylinder, a complete, universal formula applies to all types of diesel
tests cannot be completed due to the limitation of actual condi- engines has not been found yet [11]. The most commonly used for-
tions. With the rapid development of computer technology, the mula is Woschni formula:
results of simulation on the piston with finite element technique 0:8
V hT1
are getting more accurate [10]. Take the piston of an engine as a ¼ 130D0:2 p0:8 T 0:53 ½c1 v m þ c2 ðp  p0 Þ ð1Þ
the object of the research and use simulation data and locale test p1 V 1
data to analyze its reliability. Then calculate the stress of the piston where vm indicates the average speed of piston and the unit is m/s;
under the conditions of thermal load conditions, mechanical load P represents gas pressure in cylinder and the unit is MPa; D repre-
conditions and thermal-mechanical coupling conditions to gain sents the diameter of the diesel engine cylinder, and the unit is m; T
reliability life parameters. And then according to the condition of represents gas temperature in cylinder and the unit is K; p  p0 rep-
accelerated life test, the accelerated life curve is obtained by simu- resents the added value generated by gas in cylinder; p1 and V1 rep-
lation calculation. If the results fit well with the model of existing resent the state of gas at the starting point of compression process;
accelerated fatigue test, it would have great significance. c1 represents the coefficient during work process: during exhaust
process the value is taken as 7.13, and during compression process
2. Temperature and thermal stress analyses its value is taken as 2.98. c2 is a coefficient about the form of com-
bustion chamber, for pre-combustion type the value is 0.0062, and
2.1. Parameters of the engine for direct injection type the value is 0.0032.
Temperature field of the piton crown affects the overall temper-
A diesel engine with the displacement of 10-L which adopts ature distribution of the piston, which plays a key role in piston
Bosch’s second generation common rail electronic control system temperature field. To obtain accurate piston temperature field,
is used as the test object. The parameters of engine are shown in many researchers have studied the heat transfer coefficient distri-
Table 1. After calibrating one-dimensional model in Boost software bution on piston crown. In this paper, AVL’s empirical formula is
which can simulate engine performance according to cylinder applied, which is as follows [11].
pressure curve of experiment, various operating conditions of the 0 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi!3 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi!2
engine can be obtained from Boost software. x2 þ y2 x2 þ y2
ar ¼ amax @1:904 þ 1:13
r r
2.2. The boundary conditions of thermal load pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi !
x2 þ y 2
þ0:683 þ 0:602 ð2Þ
The key of piston temperature field calculation is the way to r
impose thermal boundary conditions. A reasonable boundary con-
dition can guarantee accurate results. So determine the maximum where amas indicates the maximum heat transfer coefficient under a
temperature and temperature distribution of key parts such as the certain condition, r represents the radius. In this paper, convection
piston crown and the ring groove is important for accurate calcu- heat transfer coefficient on the piston crown is imposed according
lation. Affected by combustion mode of gas, moving speed of the to the formula (2).
airflow, intake pressure and temperature, geometry of combustion (2) Heat transfer coefficient of the oil-cooling channel
chamber as well as the influence of different cooling methods, The following empirical formula is used to calculate heat transfer
coefficient of the oil-cooling channel:
Table 1
  0:24
D
Parameters of the engine. Nu ¼ 0:495Re0:57 Pr0:29 ð3Þ
H
Model Unit WP10.300N 
where Nu ¼ aD =2k, Re ¼ xcD ; x ¼ 30
n
, a is the heat transfer coeffi-
Type – Water-cooled, 4-stroke,
direct injection, cient, D⁄ is the equivalent diameter, k indicates the thermal con-
turbocharged ductivity of lubricating oil, n is rotating speed, H is the average
Bore  stroke mm 120  130 height of cross-section and c is dynamic-viscosity coefficient.
Displacement L 9.726
Rated power/Rated speed kW/(r/min) 221/1900
(3) Heat transfer coefficient of piston side surface
Peak torque/peak torque speed N m/(r/ 1390/1200–1500 Since there are many factors that affect the heat transfer
min) coefficient of piston side surface in solving piston temperature
The number of cylinders – 6 field, it is difficult to determine the heat transfer coefficient.
The number of valves per cylinder – 2
The basic approach currently is to regard the model as a
Fuel system – ECU Common Rail
After-treatment system – SCR system multi-layer plate heat transfer model. Based on the theory of
Compression ratio – 17:1 multi-layer plate heat transfer, heat conduction problem can
Maximum exploding pressure MPa 16 be described with thermal resistances connected in series. The
Pmax total thermal resistance can be seen as the sum of each resis-
Rated power of BSFC g/(kW h) 217
Emission – Euro IV
tance [11], which is as follows:
1-meter noise dB (A) <104 Rtotal ¼ R1 þ R2 þ R3 þ R4 ð4Þ
314 X.F. Liu et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 119 (2017) 312–318
R1, R2, R3 and R4 indicate the thermal resistance of piston rings, oil
film, cylinder liner and water jacket respectively.
(4) Heat transfer coefficient of piston cavity
The thermal condition in crankcase is good; heat transfer coef-
ficient of the piston cavity changes little, which is calculated as
follows:
kðT 1  T 2 Þ
a¼
dðT 1  T n Þ
where d represents the thickness of piston crown, k represents ther-
mal conductivity of the piston, Tn is temperature of gas in the crank-
case, T1 represents temperature of the piston crown, and T2 is the
temperature of piston cavity.
2.3. The boundary conditions of mechanical load
The gas explosion pressure is imposed on piston. In the finite
element calculation of the piston, the explosion pressure imposed
on piston crown and piston junk is uniformly distributed. Since the
gas pressure will reduce gradually after the piston rings, the explo-
sion pressure imposed on the first ring groove is 75% of the total
pressure, and 25% of the pressure is imposed between the first ring
bank and the second ring groove. Gas pressure under the second
ring groove is negligible.
If the engine is working, the movement of piston is linear recip-
rocating movement piston in cylinder. The reciprocating inertia
force is proportional to piston mass, and the direction is opposite
to the direction of piston movement. The acceleration of recipro-
cating movement is:
aj ¼ rw2 ðcos a þ k cos 2aÞ
where r represents the radius of crank, x is the rotating speed of
engine, and k is the ratio of crank radius to the length of connecting
rod.if the engine is working, the piston does linear reciprocating
movement along the cylinder. Since the piston skirt is in contact
with the cylinder, it is subjected to a side thrust due to the force
of connecting rod. The solving formula of side thrust is as follows:
F c ¼ ðF gas  F j Þ tan b
R
sin b ¼ sin a
L mal stress, and the thermal stress value is 62 MPa. The maximum
where Fgas is gas explosion pressure of the piston crown, Fj is the
inertia force, a represents crank angle, and b is the angular displace-
ment of connecting rod.
2.4. Finite element method of piston
The piston bears the mechanical stress such as the maximum
combustion pressure due to combustion and withstands the ther-
mal stress because of the change of temperature. Therefore the
analysis of thermal-mechanical coupling stress and strain on the
piston is needed.
First, the three-dimensional model of piston is imported into
Hypermesh software to carry out the mesh generation. After read-
ing the geometry model, geometry cleanup of the model is needed
before mesh generation. Then 2D mesh model is set up. Mesh
refinement is also needed during mesh generation according to
the actual situation. The temperature and the temperature gradi-
ent on the piston crown is very high and the meshes need to be
refined. The piston ring groove has a high heat flux and the stress
concentration is very obvious, so the meshes in this region should
also be refined. Furthermore, the meshes of piston pin boss should
be as symmetric as possible. After the 2D mesh model is set up, due
to the temperature and heat transfer coefficient in various parts of
the piston are different, the interfaces should be established in var-
ious parts to define the boundary conditions. Then the mesh type
needs to be selected. The mesh type is configured as DC3D10 in
temperature field calculation and C3D10M in stress field calcula-
tion. The mesh model is as shown in Fig. 1.
(1) Analysis of thermal stress of the piston
ð5Þ After the settings of piston material parameters, the calculation
is carried out in Abaqus software. The piston material is aluminum
alloy ZL109, the elastic modulus is 70 GPa, and the Poisson ratio is
0.3, the density is 2.7 t/m3, the thermal conductivity is 172 w/
(m k). In stress field analysis of the piston, in order to avoid the cal-
culated result is too large due to the constraints, the piston pin is
added on the piston model, the constraints on the contact portion
between the piston pin and connecting rod is imposed, and inter-
faces are established between the piston pin and pin hole. The
experimental results show that such constraints are reasonable.
If the FEM simulation calculation of the piston is completed, the
calculated result of temperature field is analyzed. The temperature
distribution of the piston is shown in Fig. 2.
From the piston’s temperature field of finite element, it can be
seen that the entire temperature distribution of the piston is not
uniform. Along the axial direction of the piston, the temperature
shows a decreasing trend from its top to bottom. The maximum
temperature is at the top of the piston, which is 576 K. The lowest
temperature appears at the piston skirt for 369 K. The difference
between the maximum temperature and the minimum tempera-
ture is 207 K. The highest temperature point of the piston appears
at the intersection between the edges of the convex plate and the
pit in the piston crown.
ð6Þ
The thermal stress calculation of the piston is based on the tem-
perature field. If calculating the piston’s stress, the piston pin is
added to the model based on the calculation model of the piston
temperature field. The mesh type is converted to C3D10M. The
constraint is established at the contact area between the piston
pin and connecting rod. Import the calculated temperature field
results into Abaqus software, and the constraint is imposed on
the piston to calculate the thermal stress. The calculated results
ð7Þ
are shown in Fig. 2(b). Maximum thermal stress mainly appears
at the top of the piston and piston ring grooves. The maximum
ð8Þ thermal stress is 80.5 MPa. The second ring groove has a high ther-
thermal stress value at the third ring groove is 48 MPa. And a high
thermal stress also appears at the oil-cooling channel, which
reaches 60 MPa. The piston skirt and the pin seat both have a small
thermal stress. The maximum thermal stress value at the pin seat
is 31 MPa, and the maximum thermal stress value in the lower end
of the piston skirt is only 28 MPa.
(2) Analysis of mechanical stress of the piston
Then boundary conditions are imposed on the piston to calculate
the mechanical stress. Fig. 2(c) is the stress when the piston bears
pressure caused by exploding gas, inertial force and lateral force.
As Fig. 2(c) shown, when bearing pressure caused by exploding
gas and inertial force, the maximum pressure appears at the top
on the inside of the piston pin hole, and the position where suffers
the maximum pressure agrees with the design manual with a value
of 158 MPa. The outer edge of the piston pin seat hole bears small
stress. The maximum stress the piston crown suffers is about
48 MPa. The ring grooves also bear relatively large stress. The max-
imum stress of the second ring groove reaches about 65 MPa, which
probably due to stress concentration. Similarly, large stress also
appears in the oil-cooling channel, which reaches about 57 MPa.
And the oil-cooling channel is close to the second ring groove, the
entire area of piston skirt suffers a relatively small stress.
 X.F. Liu et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 119 (2017) 312–318 315

Fig. 1. The finite element model of the piston.

(3) Analysis of thermal mechanical coupling of the piston
The analysis of the piston thermal mechanical coupling is based
on the results of the analysis of mechanical stress. The temperature
field and the mechanical stress are taken into consideration at the
same time. Import the calculated results of the piston temperature
and impose the mechanical stress. Then finite element calculation
is carried out and the results are analyzed. As shown in Fig. 2(d),
under the condition of thermal mechanical coupling, the maximum
value of the stress on the piston is 171 MPa and the position is at
the top of the piston pin seat. Comparing with the results when
the piston only bears mechanical stress, it can be seen that the
value of maximum stress changes little. And the position where
the maximum stress appears is also nearly unchanged. Then
observe the force conditions of the piston skirt and a piston ring
groove, it can be found that comparing with the state when the pis-
ton only bears the mechanical stress, the stress on the piston ring
grooves changes greatly under the condition of thermal mechani-
cal coupling. The maximum thermal stress on the second piston
ring groove reaches 104 MPa, and the maximum thermal stress
at the third ring groove reaches 82 MPa. The maximum thermal
stress appears in the internal surface of the ring groove under both
situations. While the thermal stress of the first ring groove is rela-
tively small and the maximum value is about 54 MPa. The maxi-
mum value of the coupling stress on piston skirt is 52 MPa,
which has increased significantly.
3. The analysis of piston accelerated life based on the
simulation data
This paper uses the Femfat software to calculate piston fatigue
life calculation and determine fatigue strength under different
stress states. In order to investigate the influence of different types
of stress on the piston life, the constant stress accelerated life test
method is used.
three single stress model, take logarithm on both sides of the equa-
tion and transform it into a linear equation, then these three equa-
tions can be expressed as a unified equation:
lnðhÞ ¼ a þ buðSÞ ð9Þ
Among the equation, h is the life of product, a and b are
unknown parameters, uðSÞ is accelerated stresses. The main task
of the acceleration equation is to determine the parameters of a
and b values.If formula (9) is expressed as Arrhenius model, there
are a ¼ inðAÞ; b ¼ E=k; uðSÞ ¼ 1=T. It represents the relationship
between the service life of product and the temperature. The h rep-
resents product life, the E represents activate energy, which is a
parameter related to the material, K is the Boltzmann constant, T
is the absolute temperature, b is called the activation temperature.
Obviously in accelerated life test, the Arrhenius model apply to
accelerated test by using temperature as accelerate stress.If for-
mula (9) is expressed as inverse power law model, there are
a ¼ inðAÞ; b ¼ n; uðSÞ ¼ lnðSÞ. In addition to the thermal stress,
products will be subject to mechanical stress and electrical stress,
etc. Many studies have shown the relationship between the accel-
erated life and the accelerated stress often meets with the inverse
power law equation when the product withstands mechanical
stress or electrical stress. h represents product life, A is constant,
n is positive constant, S represents mechanical stress or electric
stress.If formula (9) is expressed as Generalized Eyring model,
there are a ¼ inðA=TÞ; b ¼ E=k; uðSÞ ¼ 1=T. The model is to charac-
terize that the product under the action of temperature and other
stress, h represents product life, a, b and n are undetermined con-
stants, K is the boltzmann constant, T is the absolute temperature,
S represents other stress.
Under accelerated test, based on the original of the random
truncation data and system reliability estimates [12,13], it has
proved that the estimates of the coefficients of a and b:
 
ep þ qf 1
a¼ þ ln C þ1 ð10Þ
ke  f
2 ^
m

3.1. Calculation conditions for accelerated life pf þ kq

b¼ 2
ð11Þ
ke  f
During the products accelerated life test, under the premise of
guaranteeing product failure mechanism is unchanged, there must Pk Pk Pk
where e¼ i¼1 u2 ðsi Þ f ¼  i¼1 uðsi Þ and p¼ i¼1 ln gi q ¼
be some links between the life of the product and its stress, the Pk
i¼1 uðsi Þ ln gi .
main task of accelerated life test is to find the relationship between
the stress and the life, the relationship between the life of the pro-
3.2. Analysis of the accelerated life under different working conditions
duct and the stress is called acceleration model. Acceleration
model mainly has the following several kinds: Arrhenius model,
(1) The piston accelerated life analysis under the condition of
Inverse power law model and the Generalized Eyring model. In
thermal stress
order to simplify data processing and calculation, for the above
316 X.F. Liu et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 119 (2017) 312–318
(a) Temperature distribution of the piston
(b) Stress of piston under thermal loads
(c) Stress of piston under Pmax and inertial force
(d) Stress of piston under thermal mechanical coupling
Fig. 2. FEM simulation calculation of the piston.
With the Boost software, different engine operating conditions
are simulated and get different cylinder pressure curve. The Pmax
vary from 15.5 MPa to 20 MPa and the temperatures in cylinder
vary form 939.42 K to 1072.4 K. In accordance with the previous
method, calculate the piston thermal stress under different tem-
perature field, and then import the results to Femfat software,
set its material parameters and stress levels, combine with the
surface roughness and heat treatment factors to calculate the fati-
gue life of the piston. Because Arrhenius model can represent the
relationships between the life of piston and the temperature. Based
on formula (9)–(11), the e, f, p, q, a, b are also calculated and shown
in Table 2.Therefore constant heat stress test the life of the piston
obeys the distribution:
lnðhÞ ¼ 12:87 þ 21351=T
h ¼ e12:87þ21351=T ð106 Þ
Trends of fitted curve of simulated data and the curve of Arrhe-
nius model vary consistent with the temperature changes. When
the T is low, there is certain error between fitting values and calcu-
lated model value and the error decreases with the increase of
stress, until it can be neglected (see Fig. 3).
3.3. Analysis of the accelerated life under the condition of mechanical
stress
Under the different condition of Pmax, The piston are calculated
by Abaqus software and the results are imported to Femfat soft-
ware, set its material parameters and stress levels, combine with
the surface roughness and heat treatment to calculate the piston
fatigue life. The specific calculation data are shown in Table 3.
The relationship between the piston life characteristics and
stress under the effect of mechanical stress meets the inverse
power law model. The constant detonation pressure stress test cal-
culation data are calculated with formula (9)–(11) and shown in
Table 3.Therefore the piston life and stress in the condition of dif-
ferent mechanical stress is:
lnðhÞ ¼ 39:33  13:39 lnðPmax Þ
h ¼ e39:3313:39lnðPmax Þ ð106 Þ
Fitted curve of simulated data and the curve of Inverse power
law model have similar trend and are shown in Fig. 4. It shows
using inverse power law model to describe the piston accelerated
life is feasible under the condition of suffering only mechanical
stress. The equation can calculate the fatigue life of the piston on
a certain stress condition.
3.4. Analysis of the accelerated life under the condition of thermo-
mechanical couple
Thermo-mechanical couple stress analysis shows that the pis-
ton suffers a combination of different stresses and cannot be sim-
ply considered as a superposition of different stresses. Therefore, in
order to reflect the level of the piston reliability design accurately,
the piston’s life reliability must be analyzed with thermal and
mechanical stresses. The fatigue life of piston is simulated under
thermal-mechanical coupling working conditions and the results
are shown in Table 4.
If the piston suffers thermal stress and mechanical stress, its life
is affected by them. In dual stress accelerated life testing, each set
of temperature and Pmax is used as stress and each calculation pro-
cess is treated as a definite number truncation test. Take logarithm
on both sides of the Generalized Eyring model, and the formula is
got:
lnh ¼ a þ buðs1 Þ þ cuðs2 Þ þ duðs1 Þuðs2 Þ ð12Þ
The last item of the formula represents the life of the piston
with the thermal stress and mechanical stress. Where,
uðs1 Þ ¼ 1=T expresses the piston thermal stress, uðs2 Þ ¼ lnðPmax Þ
expresses piston mechanical stress. Use SPSS software to calculate
and the results are shown in Table 4.
 X.F. Liu et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 119 (2017) 312–318 317

Table 2
Constant thermal stress test related calculation data.

T h/106 gi ln(g) 1/T (1/T) * ln(g)

1 939.4 22,550 8088 8.99 0.001064 0.020709
2 954.2 12,100 4340 8.38 0.001048 0.019733
3 968.9 8910 3190 8.07 0.001032 0.0188
4 983.7 6550 2350 7.76 0.001016 0.017909
5 998.5 4850 1743 7.46 0.001001 0.017058
6 1013.3 3610 1290 7.16 0.000987 0.016255
7 1028.1 2700 966 6.87 0.000973 0.015484
8 1042.9 2030 726 6.59 0.000959 0.01496
9 1057.7 1530 548 6.31 0.000945 0.014491
10 1072.4 1160 415 6.03 0.000932 0.014042
Calculated results e f p q a b
9.94e6 0.0096 73.62 0.0737 12.87 21,351

25000
Simulation curve
Arrhenius model 18
20000 Inverse power law model
15
15000
6

12
10000

6
9
5000

6
0

920 940 960 980 1000 1020 1040 1060 3

(K)
0
Fig. 3. Piston life curve under the conditions of different temperature. 15 16 17 18 19
PMax(Mpa)

Therefore, LnðhÞ ¼ 0:373  8:89LnðPmax Þ þ 9019 lnðPmax =TÞ Fig. 4. Piston life curve under the conditions of different mechanical stress.

ln Pmax ð9019=T8:89Þ 6
h ¼ 0:689e ð10 Þ
It has a clear linear relationship between the Pmax and the cylin-
der temperature T, T is replaced by Pmax, and the calculation of
Generalized Eyring model and the fitting curves of piston life are
shown in Fig. 5. It can be seen that the model is suitable to simulate
fatigue life of the piston under the condition of thermal-
mechanical coupling. The life curve under different conditions
are obtained, which can provide an effective reference for the
assessment for piston life.
4. Conclusions
The finite element calculation and analysis of life accelerated
reliability have been conducted on a piston. Calculating the
average temperature in cylinder and the average convective heat
transfer coefficient, the boundary conditions imposed by the
empirical formula are used to calculate the piston temperature
field and stress field. The calculated results show that the maxi-
mum stress appears at the top of the piston inner chamber when
the piston suffers thermal stress. If the piston is under the effect
of mechanical stress, the maximum stress appears at the upper
portion of piston pin seat. Under the condition of the thermal-
mechanical coupling, the maximum stress of the piston appears
at the top of the piston pin seat, which is consistent with the actual
situation. To study the relationship between pistons accelerated
life and its operating mode, the life of piston under different stress
conditions are calculated respectively. The results show that the
Inverse power law model fits well with the accelerated life of the

Table 3
Constant Pmax stress test calculation data.

Pmax/MPa h/106 g ln(g) ln(Pmax) ln2(Pmax) ln(Pmax) * ln(g)

1 15.5 16.98 6.08 1.81 2.74 7.51 4.95
2 16.0 10.13 3.63 1.29 5.08 25.75 3.57
3 16.5 6.06 2.17 0.78 5.11 26.07 2.18
4 17.0 3.59 1.29 0.25 5.13 26.37 0.72
5 17.5 2.16 0.77 0.26 5.16 26.67 0.74
6 18.0 1.52 0.54 0.61 5.19 26.96 1.76
7 18.5 1.18 0.42 0.86 5.22 27.25 2.52
8 19.0 0.92 0.33 1.11 5.24 27.53 3.27
9 19.5 0.72 0.26 1.35 5.27 27.80 4.02
10 20.0 0.57 0.20 1.59 5.29 28.07 4.76
Calculated results e f p q a b
82.62 28.73 1.686 5.649 39.33 13.39
318 X.F. Liu et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 119 (2017) 312–318

Table 4
Constant thermal-mechanical coupling test calculation data.

Pmax/MPa T/K h/106 1/T ln(Pmax) Ln(h)

1 15.5 939.42 6.975 1.06E03 2.741 1.942
2 16 954.205 3.533 1.05E03 2.773 1.262
3 16.5 968.99 1.731 1.03E03 2.803 0.549
4 17 983.775 1.211 1.02E03 2.833 0.191
5 17.5 998.56 0.8986 1.00E03 2.862 0.107
6 18 1013.345 0.6467 9.87E04 2.89 0.436
7 18.5 1028.13 0.4708 9.73E04 2.918 0.753
8 19 1042.915 0.3464 9.59E04 2.944 1.06
9 19.5 1057.7 0.2576 9.45E04 2.97 1.356
10 20 1072.485 0.1935 9.32E04 2.996 1.642
Calculated results a b c d
0.373 0 8.89 9019

8
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(50306017) and the Postdoctoral Funding in Jiangsu Province of
China (0901016B) to the research work. Give special thanks to
anonymous reviewers and the proofreading from Dr. Wei, for their
valuable contributions in improving this manuscript.