Wear 271 (2011) 509–513 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Wear journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wear Multiscale study of finish-honing process in mass production of cylinder liner L. Sabri a,b , S. Mezghani a,∗ , M. El Mansori a , H. Zahouani c a Arts et Métiers Paris Tech, LMPF, Rue Saint Dominique, BP508, 51006 Châlons-en-Champagne, France b Renault s.a.s, Direction de l’Ingénierie Mécanique, 67 rue des bons raisins, 92500 Rueil Malmaison, France c Laboratoire de Tribologie et Dynamique des Systèmes, UMR CNRS 5513, Ecole Centrale de Lyon, 36 avenue Guy de Collongue, 69131 Ecully Cedex, France article info Article history: Received 17 January 2010 Received in revised form 25 March 2010 Accepted 31 March 2010 Available online 14 April 2010 Keywords: Honing Surface texture Multiscale decomposition Cylinder engine abstract In mass production of cylinder liners, the industrial honing involves multistage abrasive finishing pro- cesses, using at first a coarse abrasive stones, and then progressively finer grades, so that a very structured surface of liner is produced. A useful method in diagnosis of industrial honing is presented. It is based on the use of multiscale surface analysis to study the progress of abrasive wear mechanisms which occurred in honing while it was in operation. Thus, the examination of generated surface components by honing to detect the topographical signatures, and especially, signatures of surface in the right scale, is an important part of quality assessment in cylinder liner production. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In production environment of internal combustion engine cylin- ders, the honing function must be repeated thousands of times with complex constraints of little variation and minimal cost. To guaran- tee reproducibility with efficient productivity in mass production of cylinder liners, the industrial honing involves an interrupted multi- stage abrasive finishing process, well known as the plateau-honing process. This very widely used process is a succession of three hon- ing stages [1]. The first stage often categorized as rough honing establishes the form of the bore. The so called “finish honing” which creates the basic surface texture of the hole is the second operation. This enables the third honing operation – plateau stage – to serve for removing the surface peaks, increasing the micro-relief quality without surface damage [2,3]. The whole multistage honed surface is hence a structured surface with a deterministic pattern of high aspect ratio features and anisotropic properties. The surface texture – i.e. the surface topography restricted to its current meaning termed by roughness, waviness and form – is presumably provided by the “finish honing”. Then careful con- trol of this operation is central to the production of the right scale and specifications of the structured surface for cylinder liner to meet its mechanical contact functionalities in piston rings/cylinder liners assemblies (i.e. running-in performance, wear resistance, load-carrying capacity, oil consumption, etc.) [4]. ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 03 26 69 91 92; fax: +33 03 26 69 91 76. E-mail address: sabeur.mezghani@chalons.ensam.fr (S. Mezghani). This work addresses issues of multiscale surface characteri- zation to give information about the surface interaction and is based on the premise that an intimate connection exists between the abrasive wear mechanisms prevailed during honing and the scale modification of topographical signatures formed from those mechanisms. As we will see in subsequent sections, the multiscale approach to extract the honing process signature is a powerful mea- surement that is helpful in giving us an idea of the scale effect of surface regeneration by finish honing and, generally, the scale of honing process. As a first approximation, it is assumed that the dimensions of the grits of vitrified bonded silicon carbide sticks are the same and the finish performance might be size-dependent “abrasive size effect” with the matter of the indentation dynamics “expansion speed factor”. All that remains, then, is to measure the arithmetic mean roughness at each scale of the generated surface after fin- ish honing, and equate the roughness scale to the grit size at a given indentation pulse, i.e. expansion speed. This provides an esti- mate of the abrasive mechanisms that were present during honing process. 2. Experimental procedure In this work, honing experiments were carried out on a verti- cal honing machine with an expansible tool (NAGEL no. 28-8470) [5]. The workpiece consists of cylinder liner of lamellar gray cast iron engine crankcase. The steps involved in the fabrication of the cylinder liners before the finish-honing operation are respectively boring and rough honing. 0043-1648/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.wear.2010.03.026