This month, we continue to examine material choices. In last month’s article, we looked at some of the reasons why people choose titanium as a con rod material. This month we shall carry on discussing titanium and some more closely allied materials. One point that was covered last month was the effect that the use of titanium has on the proportion of the externally applied loads that the con rod bolts experience. This is affected not only by the magnitude of the external loads (in...
In the design of crankshafts we have to incorporate counterweighting for various reasons, either for reduction of bearing loads, or to reduce or eliminate primary couples. Often this is achieved through careful design of the crankshaft and the counterweights are incorporated into the crankshaft. What we aim to do in providing a counterweight is to achieve a certain moment relative to the crankshaft axis. Depending on the configuration of the crankshaft these may or may not be directly...
Don’t you just love modern day IT terminology? I mean it’s so graphic, so descriptive and often without even knowing the purpose of the feature or component, simply hearing the name gives you a pretty good idea. Thus for instance, we have floppy discs which were, at least initially – floppy, and hard discs that are well, – hard! Thus when we hear the term CAN Bus, without fully understanding what might be going on and ignoring the pre-fix, our imagination conjures up...
If you’ve been in the automotive industry for any length of time you will by now have the words “higher performance, less weight at a cheaper price” more or less burned into the inner soul of your psyche. Since weight is the ultimate destroyer of any performance improvement, it nevertheless rankled if ever we were to reduce the weight of the power unit by some paltry amount someone always managed to find room for yet one more electric motor in the seat! Be that as it may...
Although cast iron cylinder liners have always been a safe and reliable choice, the differential expansion rate between them and the aluminium pistons, as well as their shear weight, has always encouraged designers to look for better alternatives. When cylinder blocks were cast iron, engines were so heavy as to make any change in the cylinder liner material utterly futile but as demands for lighter engines made aluminium more attractive, the push towards some kind of aluminium cylinder...