A lecture by Calum Douglas, author of The Secret Horsepower Race: Western Front Fighter Engine Development, for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. I'm sure I only understood a small fraction of his discussion, but it's still absolutely fascinating stuff.
Presentation actually starts around the 13:30 mark, for whatever reason.
Oh, thanks for this. I am reading the book now (shocking I know!). The book is very good so far (covers mostly English and German engines, allied engines are already very well documented and analyzed). The engine development they were doing in the 30's could be compared to the passenger car engine development they were doing in the 80's and 90's! (yes, obviously very different requirements)
Very interesting. Really, really interesting.
Lots of developments from the 80-90's, but there are some that really have not made it into engines until recently. And some that are still not- that vane based throttle is really cool.
One key thing, the pre-chamber combustion is a huge part of F1 engines these days- meaning they can run really lean and make really good power. Let alone, not knock running lean.
I was not aware that the electrical conductivity of air increased as density decreased- had no idea that ignition was largely useless at high altitudes. Which lead to that clever ring combustion- which made the combustion closer to the ideal Otto cycle.
And fascinating development for all of the various supercharger.
Let alone the clever things the Germans did due to material restrictions- like the massive high overlap engines to keep the exhaust valves cool and then that leading to VTEC (yo).
Makes me think that the Japanese read a lot of German technical reports in the 60s when the Americans were not really aware of the developments (CVCC were a pre-chamber ignition, basically, letting the engine run really lean and keep the HC down for emission). They waited for the VTEC until they had EFI, as I can see it.
The preface to the books talks about he was able to get access to some very interesting never before seen info from the relative of one of the German engineers. They even still had some prototype parts.
If you did not watch for the question and answer, someone asked how they solved the ignition issue with the Merlin engines. They pressurized the magneto. Probably a simpler solution, but the compression ignition ignition is super interesting.
He briefly mentions it in the talk, but one of the issues with the Germans, that he mentions in the book, is that they where SO intense in their research and development that it wildly delayed the use of the practical use of that research.
In reply to aircooled :
I missed that question as I was busy typing to perhaps send some info about Alfa Romeo- he made a comment about FIAT (all caps for a reason back then), and given the technical paper my Alfa friend gave me from the late 30's, I think Alfa was quite a bit ahead of FIAT in terms of solutions. So suspect that they had far superior engines than FIAT did. Theoretically.
The paper I had, Alfa had developed a basic EFI system they used for their race motors. Which gave them more power and far better fuel economy. And their motors were compound boosted at the time, using some pretty trick fuel as well.
I need to find that paper, scan it, and post it somewhere. My suggestion was to look at Alfa's road research to get some insight to the airplane engines.
And it should not be forgotten that Italy was a hot bed for fast airplanes in the 30's, in direct race competition with Supermarine.
The book does mention a bit about the FIAT AS6 motor early in the book. The later version has some fatal flaw they could not figure out. It killed a few pilots before they gave up.
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