Reliability Optimization of Non-Automotive Engine Valve

Engine valves are designed and manufactured to work at high temperatures and pressures under repetitive load cycles. To make this happen, the valves have to be capable of operating for long periods - thousands of times a minute - and at extreme temperatures. Operation and Maintenance Manual, but at times, valves wear or break much before their stipulated MTTF (Mean Time to Failure) period. This can be attributed to non-optimal application of design, or materials, or manufacturing method, or heat treatment, or assembly style, or, quite simply, abuse of the final product by the end user. Engine valves experience a wide range of stresses during the operation of the engine, which lead to either impact failure or fatigue failure. The various modes of failure of the engine valve are worn, breakage and bend. This project seeks to systematically optimize the reliability of the valves used in internal combustion engines using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Design of Experiments (DoE).