<p>Engine development is now driven by cost, performance, governmental regulations and customer demands. Several of the requirements have tribological associations. Tribological improvements which consist in lowering friction and improving wear resistance in engines, will play a major role to increase reliability and life cycle.</p><p>The components studied here are parts of the valvetrain mechanism of heavy-duty Diesel engines. The injection cam is one of the most problematic parts of the camshaft, as it is subjected to high pressures from the fuel injector. Lubrication is of significant importance in the prevention of cam failure caused by wear. However, the satisfactory lubrication of the cam and roller contact has proved to be one of the most difficult tribological design challenges to take up.</p><p>For a lubricated contact, the degree of separation between surfaces has a very strong influence on the type and amount of wear. This degree of separation is termed as specific film thickness ; its value provides a measure of the severity of asperities interaction in the lubricated contact. In this report, attention is drawn on the evaluation of oil film thickness in the cam-roller contact, in order to predict regimes of lubrication and thus to identify the probable wear zones of the injection cam. Then, confrontation with experimental results is performed(observation of worn cam surfaces). Future work to achieve is to discover the influence of the different parameters on oil film thickness, by performing a multivariate analysis. The next step will focus on modelling the wear of injection cams, and finally establishing quantified correlations between wear and specific film thickness.</p>

Engine development is now driven by cost, performance, governmental regulations and customer demands. Several of the requirements have tribological associations. Tribological improvements which consist in lowering friction and improving wear resistance in engines, will play a major role to increase reliability and life cycle. The components studied here are parts of the valvetrain mechanism of heavy-duty Diesel engines. The injection cam is one of the most problematic parts of the camshaft, as it is subjected to high pressures from the fuel injector. Lubrication is of significant importance in the prevention of cam failure caused by wear. However, the satisfactory lubrication of the cam and roller contact has proved to be one of the most difficult tribological design challenges to take up. For a lubricated contact, the degree of separation between surfaces has a very strong influence on the type and amount of wear. This degree of separation is termed as specific film thickness ; its value provides a measure of the severity of asperities interaction in the lubricated contact. In this report, attention is drawn on the evaluation of oil film thickness in the cam-roller contact, in order to predict regimes of lubrication and thus to identify the probable wear zones of the injection cam. Then, confrontation with experimental results is performed(observation of worn cam surfaces). Future work to achieve is to discover the influence of the different parameters on oil film thickness, by performing a multivariate analysis. The next step will focus on modelling the wear of injection cams, and finally establishing quantified correlations between wear and specific film thickness.