Difference Between Wet Cylinder Liner and Dry Cylinder Liner of Diesel Genset

When most people buy diesel generator sets, they often have difficulty in choosing which cylinder to configure. Therefore, Dingbo Power will explain the difference between different cylinders of the diesel generator set.

The inner wall of the cylinder is a combustion chamber, and the surface alternates with high-temperature, high-pressure gas, and fresh air at lower temperatures during operation. In addition, the influence of gas pressure and temperature makes the cylinder surface prone to wear. When the cylinder wall is worn to a certain extent, the sealing between the piston ring and the cylinder wall will lose, and a large amount of gas will leak into the crankcase, which will worsen the performance of the diesel engine, and the engine oil is easy to deteriorate. So there are high requirements for the material, machining accuracy, and surface roughness of the cylinder. The overhaul period of diesel engines is usually determined based on the wear of the cylinder walls.

In order to improve the strength and wear resistance of the cylinder, facilitate maintenance, and reduce costs, better alloy materials are usually used to make the cylinder into a separate cylinder sleeve and insert it into the cylinder body. Generally, cylinder liners are made of wear-resistant alloy cast iron, such as high phosphorus cast iron, boron containing cast iron, ductile iron, or austenitic cast iron. In order to improve the wear resistance of the cylinder liner, some cylinder liners are also subjected to surface quenching, porous chromium plating, nitriding treatment, or molybdenum spraying.

The commonly used cylinder liners of diesel generator sets can be divided into dry type and wet type.

1. The characteristic of dry cylinder liners is that the outer wall does not directly come into contact with cooling water, and the wall thickness is generally 1-3mm. In order to obtain enough actual contact area with the cylinder block and ensure the heat dissipation and positioning of the cylinder liner, the outer wall of the cylinder liner and the inner wall of the cylinder block bearing hole that are matched have a certain machining accuracy, and the two generally use interference fit. The advantages of dry cylinder liners are that they are not prone to water or air leakage, the structural stiffness of the cylinder body is large, the distance between cylinder centers is small, and the machine weight is light.

2. The characteristic of wet cylinder liners is that their outer walls come into direct contact with cooling water. In addition, it has a larger wall thickness than dry cylinder liners, typically 5-9mm thick. The advantage of wet cylinder liners is that the cylinder body is easier to cast, easier to maintain, and has good heat dissipation effect. The disadvantage is that the cylinder block has poor stiffness, is prone to pitting, and is prone to water and air leakage. It is mainly used for heavy-duty diesel engines and aluminum alloy cylinder block engines.

Under the diesel generator set with the same power, the price of cylinders made of different materials is also different, so the customer must select the corresponding cylinder according to their own practical environment and practical duration when purchasing, otherwise there will be the use failure of cylinder pulling and the potential safety hazard of cylinder explosion.

Dingbo Power has an excellent and outstanding technical team led by several experts. Since its establishment in 2006, it has established close cooperative relationships with multiple companies such as Cummins, Yuchai, and Shangchai. The company is committed to the long-term development of generator sets to meet market needs. Dingbo Power's products have strong comparative advantages in terms of performance, price, after-sales service, and delivery time. If you are also looking for diesel generator sets, please contact us by email dingbo@dieselgeneratortech.com.