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Air quenching is a common manufacturing process in automotive industry to produce high strength metal component by cooling heated parts rapidly in a short period of time. With the advancement of finite element analysis (FEA) methods, it has been possible to predict thermal residual stress by computer simulation. Previous research has shown that heat transfer coefficient (HTC) for steady air quenching process is time and temperature independent but strongly flow and geometry dependent. These findings lead to the development of enhanced HTC method by performing CFD simulation and extracting HTC information from flow field. The HTC obtained in this fashion is a continuous function over the entire surface. In current part of the research, two patching algorithms are developed to divide entire surface into patches according to HTC profile and each patch is assigned a discrete HTC value.

As-cast or as-solution treated cast aluminum A319 has copper solutions within its aluminum dendrite. These copper solutions precipitate out to form Al2Cu through a sequence of phase changes and bring with them volume changes at elevated temperatures. These volume changes, referred to as thermal growth are irreversible. The magnitude of thermal growth at a material point is decided by the temperature history of the material point. When an under aged or non heat treated cast aluminum is exposed to non-uniform temperature such as that during engine operation, thermal growth leads to non-uniform volume change and thus additional self balanced stresses. These stresses remain inside material as residual stresses even when the temperature of the material is uniform again. In the present paper, numerical analysis method for thermal growth is developed and integrated into engine operation analysis.

In this study, a finite element analysis method is developed for simulating a camshaft cap punching bench test. Stiffness results of simulated camshaft cap component are correlated with test data and used to validate the model accuracy in terms of material and boundary conditions. Next, the method is used for verification of cap design and durability performance improvement. In order to improve the computational efficiency of the finite element analysis, the punch is replaced by equivalent trigonometric distributed loads. The sensitivity of the finite element predicted strains for different trigonometric pressure distribution functions is also investigated and compared to strain gage measured values. A number of equivalent stress criteria are also used for fatigue safety factor calculations.

In a separate SAE paper (Cylinder Head Design Process to Improve High Cycle Fatigue Performance), cylinder head high cycle fatigue (HCF) analysis approach and damage calculation method were developed and presented. In this paper, the HCF damage calculation method is used for risk assessment related to customer drive cycles. Cylinder head HCF damage is generated by repeated stress alternation under different engine operation conditions. The cylinder head high cycle fatigue CAE process can be used as a transfer function to translate engine operating conditions to cylinder head damage/life. There are many inputs, noises, and design parameters that contribute to the cylinder head HCF damage CAE transfer function such as cylinder pressure, component temperature, valve seat press fit, and cylinder head manufacturing method. Material properties and the variation in material properties are also important considerations in the CAE transfer function.

For aluminum automotive cylinder head designs, one of the concerning failure mechanisms is thermo-mechanical fatigue from changes in engine operating conditions. After an engine is assembled, it goes through many different operating conditions such as cold start, through warm up, peak power, and intermediate cycles. Strain alternation from the variation in engine operation conditions change may cause thermo-mechanical fatigue (TMF) failure in combustion chamber and exhaust port. Cylinder heads having an integrated exhaust manifold are especially exposed to this failure mode due to the length and complexity of the exhaust gas passage. First a thermo-mechanical fatigue model is developed to simulate a known dynamometer/bench thermal cycle and the corresponding thermo-mechanical fatigue damage is quantified. Additionally, strain state of the cylinder head and its relation to thermo-mechanical fatigue are discussed. The bench test was used to verify the TMF analysis approach.

Typically, modern automotive engine designs include separate cylinder heads and cylinder blocks and utilize a multilayer steel head gasket to seal the resulting joint. Cylinder head bolts are used to hold the joint together and the non-linear properties of head gasket provide capability to seal the movement within the joint, which is essential for engine durability and performance. There are three major failure modes for head gasket joint: fluid or gas leakage due to low sealing pressure, head gasket bead cracking due to high gap alternation and scrubbing/fretting due to pressure and temperature fluctuations causing lateral movement in the joint. During engine operation, the head gasket design should be robust enough to prevent all three failure modes and the resulting design must consider all three major failure modes to provide acceptable performance.

Cylinder head design is a highly challenging task for modern engines, especially for the proliferation of boosted, gasoline direct injection engines (branded EcoBoost® engines by Ford Motor Company). The high power density of these engines results in higher cylinder firing pressures and higher operating temperatures throughout the engine. In addition to the high operating stresses, cylinder heads are normally heat treated to optimize their mechanical properties; residual stresses are generated during heat treatment, which can be detrimental for high-cycle fatigue performance. In this paper, a complete cylinder head high cycle fatigue CAE analysis procedure is demonstrated. First, the heat treatment process is simulated. The transient temperature histories during the quenching process are used to calculate the distribution of the residual stresses, followed by machining simulation, which results in a redistribution of stress.

In CAE analysis of cylinder bore distortion, valve seat distortion, valve guide-to-seat misalignment and cam bore misalignment, nodal displacements on the cylinder bore inner surface and on the gage lines of valve seats, valve guides and cam bores are typically output. Best fit cylinders, best fit circles and best fit lines are computed by utilizing the output displacements of the deformed configuration. Based on the information of the best fit geometry, distortions and misalignments are assessed. Some commercial and in-house software is available to compute the best fit cylinders, best fit circles and best fit lines. However, they suffer from the drawback that only one best-fit geometry can be computed at a time. Using this kind of software to assess distortions and misalignments of engine components would be tedious and prone to error, since data transfer as well as the intermediate computation has to be done by hand, and the process is not automatic.

High cycle fatigue material properties are not uniformly distributed on cylinder heads due to the casting process. Virtual Aluminum Casting (VAC) tools have been developed within Ford Motor Company to simulate the effects of the manufacturing process on the mechanical properties of cast components. One of VAC features is the ability to predict the high cycle fatigue strength distribution. Residual stresses also play an important role in cylinder head high cycle fatigue, therefore they are also simulated and used in the head high cycle fatigue analysis. Cylinder head assembly, thermal and operating stresses are simulated with ABAQUS™. The operating stresses are combined with the residual stresses for high cycle fatigue calculations. FEMFAT™ is used for the high cycle fatigue analysis. A user-defined Haigh diagram is built based on the local material properties obtained from the VAC simulation.