When (or if) we watch a Formula One race on television this year, the commentators will probably talk about the KERS system, and how (or if) it is being used. The KERS units have yet to attain the same impressive level of reliability of the highly stressed internal combustion engines used alongside them. This is hardly surprising; we understand combustion engines pretty well after having developed them for more than 130 years, and modern race engines, in series where regulations are essentially static, have incrementally increased Read more…
Archive for August, 2011
Battery KERS
Thursday, August 11th, 2011Cast-in pipes
Thursday, August 11th, 2011
Engine developers have always been regarded as ’strange’ people. The reason for this is unclear, although the fact that we tend not to come across as ’straightforward thinking’ people in the eyes of others may have something to do with it. But then finding non-straightforward solutions to problems is part of the engine developer’s job.
One of the most interesting things about an engine is Read more…
Compressed natural gas
Thursday, August 11th, 2011
Many years ago, journalists and vehicle road testers used to talk about ‘cooking engines’. At the time I understood it to be a term describing the performance of the unit, but I was unsure if it related to a high-performance, highly tuned engine or simply a fairly standard, docile unit reminiscent of a kitchen stove; the term meant nothing to me. Today, of course, with increasing awareness of fuel security and global warming, any engine described as ‘cooking’ must surely be the latter, and fuelled by the one fuel which is Read more…
Nut design for increased fatigue resistance - 2
Thursday, August 11th, 2011
In the previous article, the subject matter was the work done in the former USSR on fastener fatigue and particularly the positive effect that nut design and material selection can have on the fatigue life of studs and other male fasteners. In this article we will look at attempts by fastener manufacturing companies to achieve the same effects using relatively subtle changes in the fastener geometry. Read more…
CAN bus - the communication superhighway
Thursday, August 11th, 2011
According to some people a data acquisition system is the least expensive performance enhancement you can make. Often a fraction of the cost of other purchases, in supplying both vehicle and driver information - lap after lap, session after session - the data provided is totally objective and, used intelligently, can only improve overall performance. Read more…
Active dynos
Thursday, August 11th, 2011
In the past, most engine development work would take place on passive dynamometers, which allowed only for steady-state power runs to ascertain basic power and torque curves. The advent of computer-controlled ‘active’ dynos however has revolutionised the way engine development programmes are run, presenting engineers with a plethora of new tools to understand engine characteristics. Read more…
Is nitriding the only option?
Thursday, August 11th, 2011
The crankshaft lies at the heart of the fundamental mechanical system in the vast majority of race engines. Only rotary race engines don’t have what we might call a crankshaft, although other mechanisms exist and which have been tested to turn reciprocating motion into rotary motion. Conventional wisdom has it that our steel race crankshafts are nitrided, almost without exception. An earlier article by Tom Sharp (1), posted in 2009, pointed to the fact that induction hardening is used occasionally on race crankshafts, although it is more Read more…
Coated bearing bores on con rods
Thursday, August 11th, 2011
There have been brief mentions in the pages of Race Engine Technology of the possibility of coating the big-end bore of con rods directly with the soft metal bearing coatings that we find on the surface of bearing shells. Further mentions have appeared in previous RET-Monitor articles on the subjects of coatings and con rods.
Many years ago, this was indeed the way it was done, with the bearings manually ’scraped’ by hand to achieve Read more…
Oil-shedding coating applications
Thursday, August 11th, 2011
In a previous article on oil-shedding coatings in summer 2010, I mentioned some of the reasons why they might yield performance gains in an engine where frictional losses due to the action of oil shearing are significant. These coatings are likely to offer most gain in engines where there is a combination of an excess of oil and a number of areas of small dynamic clearance where shearing takes place.
The reality is that, where opportunity exists to engineer Read more…
The turbo ball bearing
Thursday, August 11th, 2011
While the concept of the turbocharger has been around since 1926, the basic compressor/bearing housing/turbine hasn’t changed that much in the past 50 years. Certainly compressor wheel aerodynamics have improved considerably and turbine technology has also changed quite a lot. But apart for the introduction of some variably geometry designs, outwardly most turbo units are still very similar to the ones I played with when I first started, many years ago. But if you look closer, particularly deep within the bearing housing assembly, Read more…
