FEA THERMAL ANALYSIS OF PISTON USING ANSYS

By: Sardar Umair Ashraf

Roll No. 12-ME-59

1.0 INTRODUCTION
A piston is a component of reciprocating engines, reciprocating pumps, gas compressors and
pneumatic cylinders, among other similar mechanisms. It is the moving component that is
contained by a cylinder and is made gas-tight by piston rings.

Fig 1.1 : Piston Terminology

Thermal analysis of piston plays a crucial role in the designing of the autothermic piston to
determine the ovality and linearity of the piston. The ovality and linearity needs to be
determined to obtain a circular piston diametrically when heated during the running of engine
for a prolonged period, also giving clearances in the skirt region for proper lubrication.

2.0 PISTON SELECTED FOR ANALYSIS

The piston diagram was obtained by survey of the various internet sites and the CAD model
of the piston was modeled in autodesk inventor and exported in .iges format.

Figure 2.1 : Isometric view of piston used for analysis

3.0 MESHING THE PISTON

The piston was meshed using the following settings in ANSYS workbench. A tetrahedron
mesh was formulated with maximum mesh quality to be less than 1 to ensure the convergence
of the problem.
Sizing
Size Function
Adaptive
Element Size
Default
Smoothing
Medium
Transition
Fast
Span Angle Center
Coarse
Defeaturing Tolerance
Default
Minimum Edge Length
0.164280 mm
Inflation
Use Automatic Inflation
None
Inflation Option Smooth Transition
Transition Ratio
0.272
Maximum Layers
5
Growth Rate
1.2
Inflation Algorithm
Pre
Statistics
Nodes
170720
Elements
102674
Mesh Metric
None

4.0 SETTING UP ANALYSIS

A time transient thermal analysis was formulated to simulated a heat addition in the piston
such that the heat developed is applied in the piston deck region. The image shows the heat
flow of 8KW as applied.

Figure 4.1 : Heat Flow at the deck of the piston

A convection was applied as shown in the image below with the convection rate assumed to
be 1.2e-3 W/mm2 oC.

Figure 4.2 : Convection applied on the piston surface

A fixed constraint was considered at the place where the gudgeon pin sits. The image below
shows the constraint as taken.

Figure 4.3 : Fixed support on the gudgeon pin

5.0 RESULTS
The whole thermal analysis was carried out carried out to simulate a period of 600 seconds.
The temperature rise was obtained by the thermal analysis and respective stress was obtained
by carrying out a coupled time transient thermal analysis for same time period.