Design consideration for piston:

The piston should have

 sufficient strength to withstand high gas pressure and inertia forces
 minimum mass to minimize inertia effects.
 Effective arrangement for oil and gas sealing
 Sufficient bearing area to prevent undue wear
 High conductivity to conduct the heat of combustion to cylinder walls.
 Sufficiently rigid construction to withstand thermal and mechanical strains.
 Sufficient support for the piston pin
Materials used for piston:
• C.I., Cast/ Forged Aluminium, Cast/ Forged steel.
• C.I. - moderately rated engines with piston speed below 6 m/s.
• C.I. has high strength, good wear resistance and low thermal expansion. Disadvantages are
low thermal conductivity (low heat dissipation) and large inertia forces.
• Al. alloy- moderately rated engines running at higher piston speeds.
• Due to high heat conductivity (about 4 times that of C.I.) – heat dissipation is quick
• Due to less weight, inertia force is less.
• But they are inferior to CI in strength and wear resistance.
• Due to high thermal expansion (about 2.5 times that of C.I.), clearance between cylinder wall
and piston is more which leads to piston slap in cold running.
• Forged aluminium alloy pistons are stronger than die-cast aluminium silicon alloys.
• Aluminium alloys show good mechanical strength at low temperature but they lose strength
above 325oC.
Mechanical load acting on the piston:
• Gas force from the cylinder pressure
• Inertia force from the oscillating motion of the piston and
• The lateral force from the support of the gas force by the inclined connecting rod, and the
inertia force of the oscillating connecting rod.
• Inertia force is maximum when the piston changes the direction; otherwise it is very small
comparatively and hence neglected.
• Piston is subjected to compressive and tensile stress caused by the gas forces and thermal
loading.
• Piston is stressed mechanically due to variation in load at the time of compression / ignition
stroke and exhaust / inlet stroke of the piston.
Thermal load:
• In addition, when the piston crown is subjected to high thermal load, the material at the gas
side attempts to expand but it is partly prevented by the cooler material under it, which leads to
compressive stress.
• At very high temperature, the metal can creep to relieve these compressive stresses and
when the piston cools, residual tensile stress is set up, hence residual thermal stress.
• If this stress is sufficiently great, cracking of the piston crown may result. So the heat should
be dissipated quickly.
Piston offset:
 In a clockwise rotating crankshaft, left side of the cylinder is called the thrust side and right
side is known as the anti-thrust side, because of the angularity of connecting rod.
 Due to this side thrust and with given clearance between the piston rings and cylinder,
piston has got the tendency to slap on the cylinder wall.
 Piston slap causes the engine to vibrate and make it noisy. The centre of piston pin may be
off set from the centre of the connecting rod to improve the noise characteristics.
 So, piston pin offset is the misalignment between the centre of the piston pin bore and the
centre of the crankshaft.
Piston crown thickness:
• It is calculated from strength and heat dissipation considerations.
• Thickness of the head, calculated from heat transfer considerations will be greater than that
calculated from strength considerations.
• If the piston is cooled by circulating oil or water than less thickness can be adopted.
• During the calculations the piston head is assumed to be a flat plate of uniform thickness
fixed at the edges and subjected to a uniformly distributed gas load.
Height of the piston:
• In a cross head type engine, the side thrust is taken by the cross head guides and slippers
and transferred to the engine structure.
• But in trunk type engines the side thrust from the piston pin is transferred to the side of the
piston skirt or trunk.
• Thrust from the side of the piston skirt is then transmitted to the liner through the oil film.
• So the piston skirt is designed to have enough bearing area.
• It must also accommodate the piston rings and the piston pin.
• At the same time, the mass of the piston should be kept low to reduce the inertia force.
• The piston height, H, depends on:
• Maximum lateral force
• The number of compression and oil rings
• The height of the top land
• The pin diameter.
• RIBS:
• When t1 is more than 6 mm suitable numbers of ribs are to be provided to strengthen the
piston head. Usually, four to six ribs are provided to make the piston rigid and prevent distortion due
to gas load and connecting rod thrust.
• Thickness of rib t2= ⅓ to ½ of t1
• Radius of the cup at the piston head = 0.7 D (required when L/D ratio is up to 1.5)
• It is provided as part of the combustion chamber space.

Role of the connecting rod:

• The main function of the connecting rod is to convert the reciprocal motion of the piston
into the rotary motion of the crank shaft in association with the crank mechanism.
• In doing so, it transfers the gas load to the crank shaft.
• In a trunk type piston, it has an axial passage to send the L.O. to the piston ring lubrication.
• In a four stroke engine, it connects the piston to the connecting rod by using the piston pin
at the small end and crank pin at the bottom end i.e. big end.
• As the piston pin may be inserted into the piston and connecting rod, small end is full round
shape; but the bottom end is made of split type to enable dismantling of the connecting rod from
the crank pin bearing.
Shape of the connecting rod:
• To avoid failure of the bearings, the con-rod should be made as light as possible.
• To avoid buckling, the rod portion usually has an I-beam shape because of the high rigidity-
to-weight ratio of this shape.
• I section has higher section modulus per unit area as compared to circular, elliptical and
rectangular cross sections.
• Section modulus is the ratio of moment of area about neutral axis to the distance of
outermost layer from neutral axis and is given by Z= M/y.
• For rectangular section Z=BH2/6 and for I section it is given as {(BH2/6)- (bh3/6H)}.
Connecting rod length:
• Length of connecting rod depends on the ratio of l/r where r is the crank radius.
• Smaller the length, smaller the ratio which increases the angularity of the connecting rod.
• Larger the angularity, more will be the side thrust and hence more is the liner wear.
• But longer the connecting rod, larger will be the engine overall height.
• Hence a compromise between them makes the length to be 4-5 times the crank radius.
• Connecting rod small end is usually made in the form of an eye and is provided with a
phosphor bronze bush and is connected to the piston pin.
• Larger end is split into two to mount it on the crank pin.
• B/E may have oblique split (A/E) or of marine type (M/E)
Manufacturing methods used for connecting rod:
• I section is preferred for medium to high speed engines, due to light weight and inertia force
for the given gas load
• For low speed high power, circular cross section is preferred.
• Required quality: adequate strength, stiffness with minimum weight.
• As the compressive load is much more than tensile load the rod is designed as a strut.
• Rankine’s formula is used for finding the cross sectional dimensions.
• Usually drop forged process is followed.
What are the forces acting on the connecting rod?
• Forces acting on connecting rod:
 Combined effect of load on the piston due to gas pressure and inertia of reciprocating parts,
friction of piston rings and piston (friction of crosshead is added for X head type)
 Inertia of connecting rod
 Friction forces in the gudgeon & crank pin bearings; they are negligible and can be
neglected.
 The inertia force loading along the length of the connecting rod is triangular.
 This inertia force tends to bend the rod