The heart of any internal combustion gasoline engine just simply has to be the camshaft and the valve mechanism it controls. Designed to maximise the amount of air entering the cylinder at a range of engine speeds, it is often perhaps the first port of call when seeking to improve engine performance. In theory, and in an ideal world, the inlet valve should open to its full lift precisely at piston top dead centre and then close again when the piston next comes to rest at bottom dead centre. Apart from assuming that the intake charge has no inertia this also assumes that the inlet valves themselves
Archive for June, 2009
The Naming of Parts
Sunday, June 14th, 2009What are ‘Sputtered’ Bearings?
Sunday, June 14th, 2009
In company with the small end bearing there’s no more hard working bearing surface than that found in the big end of high performance gasoline and diesel race engines.
In a good example of a reverse technology flow - series production to racing - bearings originally developed to cope with extreme cylinder pressures found in the latest generation of high speed passenger car and commercial diesel engines have found their way into Formula One and sport car engines.
Emerging Materials
Sunday, June 14th, 2009
The field of materials and metallurgy has a big role to play in racing engine design, especially in those categories where the regulations allow emerging materials to be used. Unfortunately Formula One is now very limited in this respect and, before engine development was frozen, people worked hard and spent lots of money to get materials close to the imposed limits, especially the specific modulus rule where a maximum of 40GPa g-1 cm3 applies to metallic materials. There is always a push for increasing specific modulus (stiffness), and there exist numerous materials
