Investigation of the Effects of Uneven Plateau Grinding on Friction, Wear Rate, and Localized Surface Damage on Internal Combustion Engine Cylinder Liners

Plateau honing is used as a surface finishing and texturing process to reduce the friction between the piston and the cylinder bore in internal combustion engines. However, according to some studies, honing has detrimental side effects such as friction increase and the unintentional production of defects in the cylinder liner surface. This paper investigates the performance and side effects of the uneven plateau-honed surfaces. Friction, wear, and failure tests were conducted to compare the performance of the plateau-honed surfaces with different levels of roughness and different profiles. In this work, the ground surfaces without honing marks outperformed the honed surfaces under boundary and mixed lubricant conditions. The effects of surface roughness on friction and wear were more significant than differences in the surface profile. In addition, larger and sharper wear particles detached from the edges of the honing grooves because of local stress concentration and left deep wear tracks in the cylinder bores.