Study of the conrod deformation during piston interaction with liquid in the internal combustion engine cylinder

Abstract

The paper analyzes the deformation of the connecting rod stem with buckling due to water ingress into the internal combustion engine cylinder (the so-called hydrolock). A method is presented that has been developed to perform calculations of stem deformation in the process of compressing air with liquid in an internal combustion engine cylinder. The method is based on solving a system of differential equations for pressure and temperature in the cylinder, followed by calculating the compression force acting on the connecting rod. A carried-out simulation of the compression process demonstrates the dependence of the air pressure in the cylinder, the stress and the strain of the connecting rod on the fill ratio of the combustion chamber with liquid. The calculations performed according to the classical theory of resistance of materials have shown that the connecting rod with the buckling of the stem begins to deform when the liquid fills the combustion chamber to a minimum of 80%. With the increase in the amount of liquid, the deformation of the conrod increases, and when the level of liquid filling is so significant that it exceeds the volume of the combustion chamber, the conrod stem deformation reaches extreme values. It is shown that under these conditions after the hydrolock occurs the engine may fail due to the piston wedging the crankshaft in the bottom dead center position.