Grob Advances in Thermal Spray Technology Development for Cylinder Bore Applications in Mass Production

In times of duality of combustion engine and electric motor propulsion, the automotive industry is developing both powertrain systems. Weight reduction and enhancement of efficiency plays a vital role in the conception of combustion engine for passenger cars.

The thermal spray technology therefore is trend-setting as it achieves both aims. As reported previously, the GROB Group has developed and integrated their GTS (GROB Thermal Spray) process for steel deposits in aluminum cylinder bores into their production lines. Further effort was now made to improve performance and versatility. The processes like activation of the Aluminum cylinder bores, the thermal spraying, the hard machining of the deposit or alternatively the rough honing as well as all quality controls are implemented into the engine block mass production line.

The application of measurement and simulation technics, hand in hand with extensive experimental investigation in spray deposit diagnostics as well as plasma and particle jet analysis, led to highly developed and advanced deposit microstructure and cylinder bore topographies. Complex and extensive CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation of the gas and particle flow gave the thermal spray process the highest performance, efficiency and product cleanliness.