[HN Gopher] Animated Engines
___________________________________________________________________
Animated Engines
Author : marcodiego
Score : 378 points
Date : 2021-03-06 17:29 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (animatedengines.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (animatedengines.com)
| prashnts wrote:
| Quite interesting! Reminds me of http://507movements.com/
|
| Edit: It's linked in the website as a "sister site".
| cstross wrote:
| Needs more Napier Deltic:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Deltic
|
| (It's a two-stroke cycle diesel but not as we know it -- three
| cylinders arranged in a triangle with a crankshaft at each
| vertex, one of them counter-rotating relative to the other two,
| and _six_ pistons, two of them opposed in each cylinder! There is
| an animation on the wikipedia page. Tracking it will make your
| head hurt. This thing was a mainstay of the British railway
| industry in the late 1950s to 1960s ...)
| ggm wrote:
| Absolutely amazing engine noise, you couldn't mistake it
| pulling out of Waverley station in Edinburgh. As a trainspotter
| I stood on the platform and saw all 22 over the years. I
| believe the tested engine used to be in the science museum in
| London but is now in the York museum.
|
| The baby deltic was a more prosaic workhorse, the deltics
| delivered the 100mph Edinburgh London service for decades.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's a pretty clever design, thank you for posting this, I
| never even heard of it before. I really like the opposing
| piston trick to get rid of the heavy head, but it does make you
| wonder how they dealt with the spot where the fuel has to be
| injected, it's hard enough to get reasonably efficient
| combustion when you're injecting into the center of the cavity.
| Did it use multiple injectors per cylinder?
| rleigh wrote:
| This part is dead simple and quite clever. It's on the
| animated diagram in dark blue, and you can also see one port
| on the cutaway engine block photo (I've been to see this in
| real life; the engineering is phenomenal). On the blue
| diagram I think it's air+fuel at one end and exhaust at the
| other.
|
| When the pistons reach their maximum opposing distance, the
| injection and exhaust ports are briefly exposed, allowing for
| entry of fuel/air and exit of exhaust in a single linear
| movement from one end of the cylinder to the other. Maybe the
| air is injected before the fuel or at a higher pressure. And
| if you time the speed of the exchange just right in time for
| the exhaust ports to be closed over before the compression
| stroke, you get complete exchange with no fuel wastage.
| Absolutely nothing like a 4-stroke engine, and not much like
| common 2-stroke designs either.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| This is neat. If someone wants a slightly more comedic take on
| automotive engine designs, Donut Media has some interesting
| content.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YIDOjD0oBI
|
| EDIT: Removed erroneous claim.
| berniemadoff69 wrote:
| > If someone wants a slightly more comedic take
|
| it seems sort of rare on the Internet, particularly in videos,
| for someone to NOT be doing a 'comedic' take, along with a jump
| cut every 5 seconds, background music; all kinds of stuff that
| feels like it is desperately trying to do everything it can all
| at once to make someone not hit the back button. ironically,
| hitting the back button is the first thing i do when a video
| starts with 'Wats up Guyz' or something along those lines. the
| original post is a breath of fresh air, straight to the point.
| I wish the Internet was more like this in general.
| marcodiego wrote:
| These "jump cut every 5 seconds" is the reason I've been
| watching less youtube everyday. It completely breaks
| continuity and are so frequent that a significant part of the
| video is wasted.
|
| Reading and watching an animation is better than video
| tutorials in almost every regard.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Donut Media pioneered the "suck squeeze bang blow" descriptor
| of the 4 stroke engine
|
| Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but I think I've heard
| the term "suck squeeze bang blow" way before Feb 23, 2021 and
| also before 2015 (creation of that Youtube channel) so I find
| that claim hard to believe.
| pen2l wrote:
| This text dated 1981 mentions it (page viii): https://link.sp
| ringer.com/content/pdf/bfm%3A978-1-349-06976-...
|
| edit: and googling some more, there are instances of in being
| used it 1950s. And the likely first author of the saying
| might well be the inventor of the 4 stroke engine himself,
| Nicolaus Otto, who used a similar saying to describe it:
| _Saugen, Drucken, Knall, Schlag._
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Only source I can find for your last claim is
| https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/a/28690/33924:
|
| > Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if the great Nikolaus
| August Otto, inventor of the four-cycle engine had a
| similar saying to explain his engine: _Saugen, Drucken,
| Knall, Schlag_...
|
| So I think this is apocryphal.
| pen2l wrote:
| You might be right, I'm not sure. At least in Otto's
| patent filing (which is found in English here: https://pa
| tentimages.storage.googleapis.com/1f/3f/4c/821c6da... ) I
| don't see such an expression.
|
| I do see though that the breakdown of the Otto cycle on
| most sites including German ones
| (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottomotor) is usually made
| in a way that just sorts of lends itself to being
| transformed that way.
|
| Well, thanks for making me go through his writings, this
| was fun!
| cableclasper wrote:
| Yeah. I've seen it in an old BBC documentary: The secret life
| of machines - Internal Combustion Engine
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfr3_AwuO9Y
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Wow screw this channel for such dumb shit.
| bagels wrote:
| It predates that channel by decades.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Sorry, it's just the first place I'd heard it. I'll edit my
| comment. I wasn't speaking on behalf of them.
|
| Weird. I've been talking to people about cars for decades and
| I'd never heard it before them. Is it just something that
| people don't say anymore?
|
| https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/28682/who-
| came...
|
| I guess for whatever reason it's just not used as much, or at
| least not enough that I've heard it before.
| spike021 wrote:
| Something to keep in mind: several sources of actual topics
| have contradicted Donut Media views on certain things and DM
| has been known to steal video clips without crediting where
| they got them or use Wikipedia articles as established sources.
|
| Not that all their videos have these issues, but some do and it
| gets pretty ridiculous.
| varenc wrote:
| I love this site! It reminds me on the "early" internet.
| Dedication to a niche interest without any other fluff.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| Exactly my choice of words :) But you beat me to it by an hour
| or so, have an upvote.
| tim333 wrote:
| Cool though their turbofan isn't going to work very well with the
| compressor being much larger than the turbine - the gas would
| find it easier to flow the wrong way. The Wikipedia animation has
| more promising dimensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbofan
| mrfusion wrote:
| This has baffled me since I was two years old. The burning fuel
| should push in all directions equally. What makes it go more
| out the back than the front?
| zxczxczxcf wrote:
| After remarking on how boring jet engines are, the page gets
| vague and states that the turbofan increases "fuel efficiency",
| without explaining why or how. I've seen it assumed elsewhere
| that the efficiency of turbofans is due to thermodynamic
| effects. In this case, what the author wrote is vague about the
| mechanics of it, at best.
|
| In fact, turbofans have better _propulsive_ efficiency because
| they accelerate more air to a lower speed. Fuel efficiency
| follows from that.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propulsive_efficiency#Jet_engi...
| amelius wrote:
| How do you drive the fuel into the highly compressed chamber, in
| case of the Diesel engine?
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| Until very recently, the injector works by a push rod from the
| cam shaft, meaning it is powered the same way the valves are.
|
| In modern engines you have other options such as an electric
| piezo stack hammer to force the fuel.
| SigmundA wrote:
| You might be conflating how an injector turns on and if with
| how the fuel is pressurized. Unit injectors create the high
| pressure for injection in the injector, combining the high
| pressure pump and injector in one, fed by a low pressure
| rail. Theses are driven mechanically via cams to create
| pressure.
|
| Common high pressure rail injectors have a separate high
| pressure pump connected to engine elsewhere and the injectors
| just turn on and off fed by a high pressure common rail.
|
| The injector itself can be actuated mechanically or via
| solenoids or piezo, but there are no injectors that create
| pressure electrically that I know of (the closest I have seen
| are voicemail medium pressure gas injectors used in ETEC
| engines). That is the electric part of the injector only lets
| the fuel through, it does not force it.
| dugditches wrote:
| via a 'fuel/injector pump'. Can click through this to get an
| idea of just how complicated(and analog) they are.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKZL7Y0b5-U
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| The fuel injectors operate at very high pressures (200+
| megapascals). Interestingly, it makes working on these systems
| dangerous since the atomized fuel can inject and slice through
| human tissue.
| capableweb wrote:
| The diesel engine is found here for the record:
| http://animatedengines.com/diesel.html
|
| Short answer: you need a fuel injector that can handle
| injection into the highly-compressed air. Longer answer:
| https://www.britannica.com/technology/diesel-engine/Fuel-inj...
| jacquesm wrote:
| The 'oldfashioned' way was using a high pressure fuel pump,
| basically a needle sized piston pushing a tiny little bit of
| fuel into a high pressure metal fuel line, the springloaded
| ballbearing return valve at the tip of the injector would be
| pushed open by the fuel and then the fuel could stream past the
| ballbearing to the injector nozzle.
| mcguire wrote:
| Adding to the "if you like this" chain, the vbbsmyt YouTube
| channel has 3d animations of historic guns and other weapons.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFOZwUakpRbIH2zisiRU0Dw
| eigenvalue wrote:
| I really love the content here but it looks so pixelated on my
| high-dpi monitor. It would be awesome is someone remade something
| like this but using modern web technologies (maybe Lottie from
| Airbnb) that uses vectorized images that can scale to any size.
| mrfusion wrote:
| If we ever had a high altitude electric plane do we think
| electric motors with huge props? Or would we try to recreate the
| turbo jet? Maybe resistive heating elements instead of fuel?
| mberning wrote:
| It would most likely emulate a turbofan, replacing the core
| with an electric motor and possibly a gearbox.
| dang wrote:
| If curious, past threads:
|
| _Animated Engines_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7127953 - Jan 2014 (34
| comments)
|
| _Animated Engines_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=701186
| - July 2009 (11 comments)
| TimBurr wrote:
| If you like this, you'll probably enjoy Elmer's Engines. It's an
| old book full of steam engine plans, designed for people who are
| new to machining.
|
| I used some of them as blueprints when I took drafting in high
| school.
|
| http://www.john-tom.com/html/ElmersEngines.html
| jonplackett wrote:
| It would be cool to see some Heath Robinson contraptions animated
| like this!
| carapace wrote:
| No Tesla turbine? I guess it would be too boring.
|
| (I know it's bad form to explain a joke, but I'm going to anyway.
| The Tesla turbine used to be legendary (as in "urban legend")
| before the Internet. Anyway, it has only one moving part which is
| radially symmetrical and rotates about its center so there would
| be nothing to see in the animation!)
| Vektorweg wrote:
| These are pretty cool.
|
| Worth to spend some time turning these into continuous SVG.
| elwell wrote:
| When I stare at these animations I can almost hear sounds.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Possibly related effect:https://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/
| more/articles/why-mos...
| elihu wrote:
| Probably worth mentioning LiquidPiston's new rotary engine design
| (which has been discussed on HN before):
|
| https://www.liquidpiston.com/how-it-works
|
| (It's like an inside-out Wankel engine. Instead of a triangular
| rotor in an oval housing, it's an oval rotor in a triangular
| housing. The advantage is you get a more optimally-shaped
| combustion chamber, which ought to improve fuel economy and
| emissions. Also the apex seal-equivalents are easier to lubricate
| as they're attached to the housing rather than the rotor. They've
| made a few prototypes and they're working on durability.)
| mberning wrote:
| Interesting twist on a Wankel style design. It looks like the
| apex seals are moved to the block rather than rotor. I'm also
| curious as to the benefit/drawback of having the flow of intake
| and exhaust perpendicular to the rotor.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I love websites like these. No fluff, just good quality content.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-06 23:00 UTC)