Design and Analysis of Cylinder Head Gasket under Engine Cold Assembly Condition: Investigating the Efficiency of the Cylinder Head Gasket under Engine Cold Assembly Condition

Abstract

The gas escaping from the engine not only affects the output efficiency of the engine substantially, but also pollutes the environment. The pre-stressing force of the bolts as well as the gasket design is critical factors in enhancing the efficiency of the sealing of the gasket. Therefore, the guarantee that the assembly between the cylinder head, bolts, and gasket is reliable and effective, through proper analytical procedures and tests becomes extremely important. For solving these issues, the thermal and structural analyses must be adopted in the engine design to save the time of actual modifications.In this investigation, the distribution of the contact pressure on the gasket at cold assembly condition at different magnitude of pre-stressing force is explored by numerical calculation based on the finite element method (FEM). The results reveal that the efficiency of the sealing of the head gasket depends on the pre-stressing force of the hold-down bolts, without taking into consideration any thermal stresses resulting from the temperature distribution in the cylinder head.The present work is focused on design and analysis of the cylinder head gasket of bolted joined structure subjected to pre-stressing force of bolts based on contact theory in order to investigate the efficiency of gasket sealing by finding the location of weakest contact pressure and deformation of cylinder head gasket. The structural analysis is carried out by using commercial FEM code ANSYS 16.2.