EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS WITH CERAMIC COMPONENTS IN PASSENGER-CAR DIESEL ENGINES.

Although present-day passenger-car diesel engines have attained a high level of development, further progress is desirable with regard to their economy, exhaust emissions, noise and service life. The further development of engines places rising demands on high temperature strength, heat-insulation properties and erosion resistance of the materials used. Ceramic materials are capable of contributing to the solution of these problems if success is achieved in mastering their brittleness, the wide spread of strength values and sensitivity to thermal shock. In this research the combustion chamber of a swirl-chamber diesel engine was provided with an insulating layer of zirconium dioxide (ZrO//2) and aluminium titanate (Al//2TiO//5) on 80% of the chamber surface.