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Internal Combustion Engine

ciechanow.ski

321–330 of 415 posts

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#321

A few thoughts while reading this: In addition to a deeper understanding of engine manufacturing considerations than I even knew I cared to learn, this article helps me appreciate why people are into engine work. The perfect tolerances and synchronization of these machines makes me a little ashamed to use the word "engineer" in my title of "software engineer". There is no real comparison of the quality of the result.…

Excuse me, but modern CPUs are way more complicated than this, even if you only look at "arranging events in time". Like several orders of magnitude more complicated. Anyone who has touched VHDL/Verilog knows how delicate signal propagation is, and how crafty you have to be with the clock. And even if you never tinkered with transistors surely you've at least looked at assembly code, and the amount of painstakingly d…

It's easy to dismiss the difficulty of something when all you see is a webpage explaining things very well and simply with some cool graphics. That webpage looks really cool, but this is just a front page of the result. The backend of all the math, equations and thoughts involved wouldn't be so visually appealing. This is just the pretty part result. If you would delve into the actual math and physics that was required for this I'm pretty sure you'd reconsider that statement. Just the study of vibrations alone is probably as difficulty as whatever you're talking about. And that's just one of several areas of study that needs to be considered when making a machine like this. Then you need static mechanics, dynamic mechanics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, knowledge of manufacturing processes, materials, among others. And each of these topics is HUGE in itself. You probably have no idea because you're a software engineer? It's easy to defend our own realm and dismiss others, when we know little about others' or all we know is based on some cool animations we saw on the web once.

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#322
Seeing the complexity of an ICE in contrast to mechanically simpler and much more efficient electric motors is fascinating. It makes it obvious to me what will persist, and what will become the next steam machine.

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#323

Seeing the complexity of an ICE in contrast to mechanically simpler and much more efficient electric motors is fascinating. It makes it obvious to me what will persist, and what will become the next steam machine.

Just goes to show how difficult energy storage is

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#324
This makes me appreciate even more the advantages electrical motors have over ICEs.

If you build a naive version of an ICE, it will have lousy performance, at best. It might not even operate without a lit of mechanical tricks and tweaks. An electrical engine, however, can be built simply and still get decent, if not great, performance.

The complexity of ICEs really is a huge disadvantage and there is no turning back.

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#326
post #324

This makes me appreciate even more the advantages electrical motors have over ICEs. If you build a naive version of an ICE, it will have lousy performance, at best. It might not even operate without a lit of mechanical tricks and tweaks. An electrical engine, however, can be built simply and still get decent, if not great, performance. The complexity of ICEs really is a huge disadvantage and there is no turning back.

Perfect example of "Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it." - Edsger W. Dijkstra

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#328
Lots of very insightful comments already, I only have one thing to contribute, which is a spelling correction:

"Since the piston moves down twice and up twice, it does a total of four strokes and the engine we’ve build is known as a four-stroke engine. Notice that it takes two revolutions of the crankshaft for the piston to do one full cycle of the work as it goes through the four phases: intake, compression, power, and exhaust."

It should be: "the engine we've built", with a 't', not a d.

/pedantry

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#329

A few thoughts while reading this: In addition to a deeper understanding of engine manufacturing considerations than I even knew I cared to learn, this article helps me appreciate why people are into engine work. The perfect tolerances and synchronization of these machines makes me a little ashamed to use the word "engineer" in my title of "software engineer". There is no real comparison of the quality of the result.…

> makes me a little ashamed to use the word "engineer" in my title of "software engineer". There is no real comparison of the quality of the result. I think that's because the barrier to entry is too low and anybody is being called a "software engineer" these days. But think about a system which makes proper use of synchronization primitives, like an OS kernel or a robotic control, or a CPU design like the other guy…

That's why I often joke that a big part of my work is as a software mechanic! Which is still highly technical and necessary but the engineering part happens less often.
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