See through engines

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Mon 18 Dec 2006 12:09
See through engines - TimOrridge
Hi all,

Being a bit of a petrol head and any thing machanical, id love to know if such a thing as a see through engine has been developed. Strikes me how engineers develop engines without actually seeing one on action execprt for computer simulations. Presumable the cylindr block would be made out of glass also the head, is this possible using latest technology. Do any of you know of one.

I know its a strange question, but a fascinating one too
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Mon 18 Dec 2006 12:30
See through engines - Number_Cruncher
Engines with transparent ports were fairly common.

The usual way they were used was to film the combustion process using a high speed camera. The data obtained could then be used to help in spark plug/injector placement, propagation, quenching and pollutant formation.

There are also test engines with transparent inlet manifolds and ports, which allow various flavours of laser velocimetry to be used, to enable correlation with CFD models.

Sometimes, the piston is made transparent, and the engine has very long con-rods and an open block. Then, using mirrors, it is possible to position a camera such that you can take photos of the underside of the piston. Obviously, you can't see where the con-rod and gudgeon pin are, so this is more useful for looking at quenching.

The eventual goal is to be able to model all the processes on a computer, as modelling is far cheaper and quicker than making special prototypes, testing them, and making sense of the data. The cost for the high speed instruments which are needed to do this work is quite eye watering. Some years ago, while looking at other transducers for an acoustics project, I asked the company's rep about a pressure transducer which fits into the spark plug in their catalogue. £20K each!

Number_Cruncher
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Mon 18 Dec 2006 15:53
See through engines - Garethj
Just to add to Number_Cruncher's reply, there's huge pressure in car development to reduce timescales and costs. If you have to build an engine to try it, it costs a lot of time and money, then if you want to change something (because that's the nature of development) it costs even more!

Much better to do a computer simulation where you can do a change in a day on screen and have the program run overnight to let you know if there's an improvement or not.

This is the main reason for not making see-through engines.

Gareth
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Mon 18 Dec 2006 17:54
See through engines - Clanger
I've still got a Colourtune transparent spark plug for looking at the colour of the burning mixture - does that count?

;-)
Hawkeye
-----------------------------
Stranger in a strange land
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