CFD Enhanced Thermal Spray Process for Coating of Cylinder Bores of Car Engines

As the autmotive industry shifts towards hybrid and alternative drive concepts like electromobility it remains vital to continuously improve internal combustion technology. Internaly combustion application represent the largest proportion of transportation technologies. Continuous development and improvement of passenger car engines focuses on reducing emission by weight reduction and enhanced efficiency. To gain a competitive advantage in present and future engines Daimler AG developed the innovative NANOSLIDE® technology that uses thermal spray technology (twin wire arc spray) to coat the internal diameter of cylinder bores. CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation is utilized to investigate the complex gas flow in the cylinder bore of the crank case during the coating process. Extensively experiments are performed and analyzed to compare the results with the quantitative analysis in order to enhance the properties of the deposited layers. The combination of simulation and coating experiments led to the development of uniform distributed layer adhesion through out the length of the cylinder bore.