The industry trend of increasing fuel injection pressures and cylinder operating pressures, and other component modifications designed to improve emissions and fuel economy, will only exacerbate the warranty problems with metal components. Ceradyne’s unique grade of silicon nitride offers engine designers a new material that is proven to solve these warranty problems.

Ceradyne has developed silicon nitride to a level where valve trains of heavy-duty diesel engines, high-pressure common rail fuel pumps, and unit fuel injection systems can operate under conditions where conventional metal parts fail. Ceradyne silicon nitride cam rollers operate at contact stresses of 1.0 to 2.4 GPa (150,000 – 350,000 psi) with no measurable wear to the silicon nitride or the companion metallic components. Silicon nitride forms outstanding wear couples with steel and cast iron, thus eliminating the primary mode of failure of metallic cam rollers, i.e. galling between the mating metallic components, resulting in increased reliability and reduced warranty claims.

Ceradyne has developed high-volume machining techniques that allow precise formation of crowned profiles on the outer diameters of cam rollers that result in minimum contact stress distributions on the ceramic and the mating metallic component, further increasing reliability of the system.

Automotive / Engine components include:

Diesel Engine Cam Rollers
Cam rollers for valve train applications in heavy-duty diesel engines.

Fuel Pump Rollers
Components and rollers for high pressure fuel pumps for heavy and light duty diesel engines

Cylindrical Rollers
Cylindrical rollers for hybrid roller bearing applications

Ceradyne also supplies prototype engine components for various R&D programs that further demonstrate the breadth of silicon nitride applications in the automotive / engine industry.