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Internal Combustion Engine

ciechanow.ski

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Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#381

Post by lasagna_coder »

knolan wrote: post #378
lasagna_coder wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the names of some of this software that are a good example of in-use but are clunky/have awful usability? I ask because it sounds like an interesting area, and I would like to see for myself what you're working with.

On one hand there is Ansys. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of a software suite for numerical simulation comprising several tools that have been acquired over the years. It’s frightfully expensive and there’s no incentive to make it more usable as there’s limited competition. Then there’s OpenFOAM which is a fantastic open source alternative. It’s entirely command line based but there are UI derivatives and cloud based…

Thanks for the info! Heh, if Blender is your only go to alternative for ease of simulations and usability, then there's definitely a need for improvement.

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#382

Post by the__alchemist »

Sharlin wrote: post #380
the__alchemist wrote: post #371

Question from the part of the article where the piston is introduced: We know what constrains the up and down positions of the piston; What constrains the direction of rotation of the crank?

The crank's angular momentum, which is originally derived from the turning of the starter motor.

Thank you. So the engine can go either way, and the direction is determined by the initial rotation?

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#383

Post by cblconfederate »

H8crilA wrote: post #254
alanbernstein wrote: post #209

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…

Most people who write software do not know/care how circuits work, as they shouldn't. Car engineers similarly don't need to know how bridges are built.

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#384

Post by cblconfederate »

qwertox wrote: post #164

One of those web pages which deserves an award. Some place in some kind of Internet Hall of Fame, an historical archive which shows the only best highlights of what websites were actually capable of presenting. Milestones of web development. This page summarizes pretty good what web technology is capable of, when in the hands of a real professional. --- Ok, I just realized this is from Bartosz Ciechanowski, and this…

The award is the bookmark. This is a great reference for cleaniness.

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#385

Post by Sharlin »

the__alchemist wrote: post #382
Sharlin wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crank's angular momentum, which is originally derived from the turning of the starter motor.

Thank you. So the engine can go either way, and the direction is determined by the initial rotation?

As far as I know, yes.

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#386

Post by cratermoon »

cx4life wrote: post #335
cratermoon wrote: post #239

When I was a boy, my dad decided that our '66 Mustang with a straight 4-cylinder engine needed new piston rings. I helped a bit but mostly watched as he tore down the engine to the barest elements, only the engine mounts keeping the block held up in the compartment. The crankshaft, connecting rods, tappers valves, piston heads, piston rods, all laid out neatly on the garage floor along with all the nuts, bolts, washe…

I think the design of a wiring harness is actually a good analogy for a well-created API, in that it provides a handful of endpoints, each of which fulfills a "contract". On modern wiring harnesses, it's pretty hard to connect the wrong thing, because the connectors are physically "typed", in that the male and female sides are uniquely shaped so only they will mate up, rather than having a generic connector that plug…

Obviously it's nostalgia for me, but timing lights, distributors, points, carburetor ports and butterfly valves, you could really see into the mechanisms. Hell, my dad (who was a master mechanic and worked on cars and railroad diesel engines to put himself through college) took a drill to the fuel injectors on a shitty 80s Chrysler engine that was knocking and stalling when cold (no amount of adjusting the choke could fix it). I drove that POS in my college years and never had a problem with it.

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#387

Post by knolan »

lasagna_coder wrote: post #381
knolan wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand there is Ansys. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of a software suite for numerical simulation comprising several tools that have been acquired over the years. It’s frightfully expensive and there’s no incentive to make it more usable as there’s limited competition. Then there’s OpenFOAM which is a fantastic open source alternative. It’s entirely command line based but there are UI derivatives and cloud based…

Thanks for the info! Heh, if Blender is your only go to alternative for ease of simulations and usability, then there's definitely a need for improvement.

The speed and efficiency of Blender at creating geometry and timing animation is incredible. Doing mostly the same stuff in the aforementioned CFD tools is incredibly convoluted in comparison. It’s like trying to code in MS Word whereas Blender is like Vim.

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#388

Post by TrackerFF »

cblconfederate wrote: post #383
H8crilA wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most people who write software do not know/care how circuits work, as they shouldn't. Car engineers similarly don't need to know how bridges are built.

Correct, but it can be a fun exercise, if for nothing else than the curiosity alone. Learning basic circuit theory leads you to diodes, which then leads to transistors, which then leads to op-amps, logic gates, etc. which leads to computational logic units like the ALU, etc. Before you know it, you have a very, very basic computer going on.

Either way, it's the core process of engineering - applying theory, and breaking up complex parts into more manageable chunks. Same goes for the car engine - it's a complex piece of machinery, but still a sum of its parts.

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#389

Post by brandmeyer »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #26
bob1029 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reciprocating machines are fairly remarkable when you consider all of the components involved, forces, etc. Even more so when you think about how long a typical car engine lasts. These incredible forces are why rotary and turbine engines are substantially more reliable. Some gas turbines have only 1 moving part, and in some applications this moving part experiences zero wear due to magnetic/aerodynamic/active bearing…

Rotaries are a funny case. Look good on paper. Thermal efficiency issues. Smog. Seals. Noise control difficulties. Weird patches like bridge ports. For modern passenger cars, it's kind of like overcoming the difficulties of two-stroke. In anti-defense of 4-stroke ICE, it seems to me like we are hitting peak wacky complexity of those. Variable timing cams, turn off the cylinders, direct port injection, turbos, variabl…

Salesman of the future: "This motor's got five-phase windings with third-harmonic injection, baby!"

That actually is a thing, its only worth a few percent of power at the same size, and I totally expect to see it happen.

Re: Internal Combustion Engine

#390

Post by cellularmitosis »

Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL wrote: post #200
TwoBit wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And nobody considers that dishonest? It's cheating in the spirit of the rules if not the letter of the rules.

Nope ; Motorsport is always drivers' skills coupled with engineering ingenuity. It's always about "what can I come up with, which gives me an edge, and still somehow is within the rules?" I don't know anything about Nascar, but the history of Formula 1 is full of such little tricks as well. It's just easier to regulate "other sports" than it is to regulate sports that come coupled with a lot of technological involvem…

> Decades past Gordon Murray designed a fan quite literally sucking cars to the ground

This reminds me of a similar story (and I'm having trouble finding a source now, perhaps it was the Lotus 78?), where the team bragged to the press about a new technology they had developed which reduced the losses in their differential, which explained their recent competitive advantage. On race day the pit crew even covered the part in rags as they ran to the back of the car to swap out the differential mid-race, lest their competitors catch a glimpse of this new technology.

Only there was no fancy differential technology. That was all a ruse to distract from the aerodynamic skirt they were using which literally sucked the car onto the track :)

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