OT Interesting video

Ken C. M. said:

Ask Chrysler they tried to get one to work in a prototype back in 70s
and it went nowhere fast.

The same fabulously competent Chrysler that had to be bailed out of
bankruptcy by the US gov't?

Wayne

Michael Press said:

In article
<[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

Wayne Pein said:

But how about this concept:
http://www.starrotor.com/Engine.htm

After gazing at hundreds of "miracle engine" articles over the years,
I've decided to ignore any reports that don't include tests of working
models. The only one of those hundreds of designs that gained any
traction was the Wankel, and it didn't set the world on fire.

That page is way too full of phrases like "...is projected to have...",
"...should be...," "...is expected to be..."

Can you can tell me why gas turbine engines are not
practical? They have run well in races.

Well, let's see... just guessing, since I'm not an expert:

The main thing is probably just the expense of producing them and using
them in cars. Gas turbines need very sophisticated materials for
things like the turbine blades, which operate continuously at very high
temperatures and very high rpm.

Regarding the expense of using them, they are far from being a "drop
in" replacement for a piston engine, since their transmissions would
need much, much more gear reduction. (I don't know about their torque
curves offhand, but some adaptation may be necessary there, too.)
Their exhaust is, I think, much hotter, too.

The high temperatures and extreme rotation speeds might cause problems
in crashes, too, when hot shrapnel might be expected.

All these things mean designers are not working with familiar
territory. They'd be doing their best to anticipate problems, but they
might easily miss something that caused big problems later.

It's interesting to note that, even if you had something that was (say)
20% "better" than a standard piston engine and no more complex, it
would still be a hard sell if it were too "different." Car companies
the world over have billions invested in machine tools and production
lines to produce today's engines. They probably won't like to gamble
on replacing all that.

To tie this into bikes: One of America's technical experts on bikes is
Professor David Gordon Wilson of MIT. He's the lead author of the book
_Bicycling Science_ and former editor of the monthly technical journal
Human Power. And, in his professional life, he researches and teaches
courses in gas turbine design. (Or did - I guess he's retired now.)

See http://www.me.mit.edu/people/personal/dgwilson.htm

- Frank Krygowski

BTW, a lot of people laugh at 43 about his pronunciation of the word
"nuclear", and I did too (quietly) when I joined the nuclear navy and
noticed some highly educated people doing the same, until I figured
out that's the legitimate pronunciation on the east coast, or at least
in parts of it.... never thought I'd be defending him!
<<<<<<

It is the same for alot of expressions too They are predominant in separate
regions of N. America. Course Bush is another region on his own.

do you say soda, soft drink, or pop?

sneeker, runner, _______ put your own.

I thought I knew English till an English person said glass ear for my
glacier. Long A.

Wayne Pein said:

Ken C. M. said:

Ask Chrysler they tried to get one to work in a prototype back in 70s
and it went nowhere fast.

The same fabulously competent Chrysler that had to be bailed out of
bankruptcy by the US gov't?

Wayne

Yeah that would be the one and only. I believe the cars name was going
to be very original the "Turbine". I saw a piece on the History Channel
about it, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

Ken
--
The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets
old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without
shocking the entire community. ~Ann Strong

Ken C. M. said:

Michael Press wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Can you can tell me why gas turbine engines are not practical? They
have run well in races.

Quoted message said:

Ask Chrysler they tried to get one to work in a prototype back in 70s
and it went nowhere fast.

Turbines are actually less efficient and pollute more than modern diesels,
so they're a non-starter for car/truck use.

On top of that, they're expensive, run at too-high RPM, and have a narrow
RPM operating range. They're more suited for constant speed, high load
applications, like generators and aircraft/marine propellers.

Turbines are well suited for aircraft because of their light weight,
compact size, reliability, and relative efficiency. Light weight and
compact size makes for a smaller plane which requires less power, etc.

An Indy race car is a relatively constant speed, high load application,
where light weight and compact size are important too. Thus Granatelli's
effort in the 60s, which would have won if not for a broken fuel pump.

Matt O.

Mark said:

Did you notice how they didn't dare test a steel tube? 🙂
Mark J.

I once had a customer in who rode his bike to lunch only to find
someone (redneck) had driven a truck over the bike numerous times from
the looks of the remains. Steel frame, typical mix of steel & aluminum
parts. The only part that survived was the BB axle.

I was watching a new tv show "Living with Ed" (Begley) last sunday and
Ed visited Jay Leno who pointed at a car he is having built, a diesel
turbine, so he can run it on soy diesel.

http://www.jalopnik.com/cars/sema/the-ecojet-jay-lenos-new-gmoutsourced-supercar-211247.php

In article
<[email hidden]>,

Matt O'Toole said:

Ken C. M. said:

Michael Press wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Can you can tell me why gas turbine engines are not practical? They
have run well in races.

Quoted message said:

Ask Chrysler they tried to get one to work in a prototype back in 70s
and it went nowhere fast.

Turbines are actually less efficient and pollute more than modern diesels,
so they're a non-starter for car/truck use.

On top of that, they're expensive, run at too-high RPM, and have a narrow
RPM operating range. They're more suited for constant speed, high load
applications, like generators and aircraft/marine propellers.

Turbines are well suited for aircraft because of their light weight,
compact size, reliability, and relative efficiency. Light weight and
compact size makes for a smaller plane which requires less power, etc.

An Indy race car is a relatively constant speed, high load application,
where light weight and compact size are important too. Thus Granatelli's
effort in the 60s, which would have won if not for a broken fuel pump.

Thanks.

--
Michael Press

Michael Press said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

But how about this concept:

http://www.starrotor.com/Engine.htm

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

After gazing at hundreds of "miracle engine" articles over the
years, I've decided to ignore any reports that don't include tests
of working models. The only one of those hundreds of designs that
gained any traction was the Wankel, and it didn't set the world on
fire.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

That page is way too full of phrases like "...is projected to
have...", "...should be...," "...is expected to be..."

Quoted message said:

Can you can tell me why gas turbine engines are not practical? They
have run well in races.

Interestingly, the Wankel first found real fertile soil at NSU in
Neckarsulm (from which the name arises) just north of Stuttgart where
I was working at the time. n R&D engineer came rolling in into our
shop at Porsche to demonstrate this new concept.

At the time I mentioned to the engineers to mark my words, that this
engine will not survive, to their utter amazement... and that of all
the others who wanted to believe in it. My thermodynamics Professor
had shown us running rotary prototypes in the lab from years past and
explained why they cannot work. They all have the same feet of clay
as they address only the mechanical part of the machine and fail to
see that this is a heat engine and thermodynamics its main focus.

Essentially one spark plug for multiple rotating combustion chambers
is what kills it. At the spark plug, temperatures in the 1000's degF
occur if the engine has any reasonable efficiency, while the intake
zone is below freezing (carburetor icing). Both areas remain a steady
state.

It's the reciprocation that makes it work. We use aluminum pistons in
a mundane engine block with steel valves that see temperatures from
freezing to flaming in one cycle. The average temperature when seen
through a boundary layer of gas is mundane. Meanwhile the Wankel
burns up! To make it work, compression had to be low giving poor
performance, requiring higher engine speed to make up for that poor
performance. The result is a short lived machine with poor fuel
economy.

When I read about propelling bicycles with the arms in a sprint or why
mechanical stress relieving doesn't work, I recall these engineering
moments where conventional thinking stymies understanding. You can be
sure that I found no takers at Porsche. Professor Kays at LSJU had it
right, although I believe his class failed to see the importance of
his lecture and that was years before Felix Wankel presented his
engine. That's often the way school is.

The Wankel is dead!

Jobst Brandt

Bill Westphal said:

BTW, a lot of people laugh at 43 about his pronunciation of the word
"nuclear", and I did too (quietly) when I joined the nuclear navy and
noticed some highly educated people doing the same, until I figured
out that's the legitimate pronunciation on the east coast, or at least
in parts of it.... never thought I'd be defending him!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_class_submarine

That's interesting. What do these people say when they discuss
nucleation and that the nucleus of an atom does thus and so. It seems
to me to be much line the people who cannot say length or strength,
saying lenth and strenth instead. I'm nut sure they have the musical
ear to discern the difference.

Jobst Brandt

Michael Press said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

But how about this concept:

http://www.starrotor.com/Engine.htm

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

After gazing at hundreds of "miracle engine" articles over the
years, I've decided to ignore any reports that don't include tests
of working models. The only one of those hundreds of designs that
gained any traction was the Wankel, and it didn't set the world on
fire.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

That page is way too full of phrases like "...is projected to
have...", "...should be...," "...is expected to be..."

Quoted message said:

Can you can tell me why gas turbine engines are not practical? They
have run well in races.

Their thermodynamic efficiency is relatively poor in comparison to the
reciprocating piston engine and the response time is miserable. They
are used effectively in power plants where they run at steady state at
their ideal speed. They did not even come close in railroad
applications where the C&O (for progress) built steam turbines and UP
(the big blow) gas turbine, although I don't know who paid the bill.

http://www.visi.com/~jweeks/centennial/index.html

Can you imagine starting from a traffic light from idle trying to get
up to speed in dense traffic. Aircraft are far better at that, their
propulsion being from a fan in the first place and then at close to
steady speed. The place where there is a cross-over is in helicopters.
They use mechanical power from the turbine to turn the rotor. That is
essential in any high altitude flying. I have not seen a piston
engine helicopter in the alps.

Jobst Brandt

Bill Westphal said:

BTW, a lot of people laugh at 43 about his pronunciation of the word
"nuclear", and I did too (quietly) when I joined the nuclear navy and
noticed some highly educated people doing the same, until I figured
out that's the legitimate pronunciation on the east coast, or at least
in parts of it.... never thought I'd be defending him!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_class_submarine

That's interesting. What do these people say when they discuss
nucleation and that the nucleus of an atom does thus and so. It seems
to me to be much like people who cannot say length or strength, saying
lenth and strenth instead. I'm not sure they have the musical ear to
discern the difference.

Jobst Brandt

In rec.bicycles.tech said:

Bill Westphal said:

BTW, a lot of people laugh at 43 about his pronunciation of the word
"nuclear", and I did too (quietly) when I joined the nuclear navy and
noticed some highly educated people doing the same, until I figured
out that's the legitimate pronunciation on the east coast, or at least
in parts of it.... never thought I'd be defending him!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_class_submarine

That's interesting. What do these people say when they discuss
nucleation and that the nucleus of an atom does thus and so. It seems
to me to be much line the people who cannot say length or strength,
saying lenth and strenth instead. I'm nut sure they have the musical
ear to discern the difference.

Jobst Brandt

You got me curious. These were Naval Acadamy grads and full-fledged
navy nuc officers (as all submarine officers are). And they were
otherwise normal, with no other speaking anomolies. And I recall they
were easterners, although most other easterners pronounced it
normally, and I never brought it up because no one ever blinked an
eye, and I thought maybe I was off-kilter, so I just accepted it, and
went with my theory all these years. But Wiki (via Bartleby) has
another interesting theory. I didn't realize Eisenhower, Reagan, AND
Carter had the same "affliction" (according to Bartleby). (And Carter
was a Navy Submarine nuke officer himself.)

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nuclear

Bill Westphal

In article <[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

Bill Westphal said:

BTW, a lot of people laugh at 43 about his pronunciation of the
word "nuclear", and I did too (quietly) when I joined the nuclear
navy and noticed some highly educated people doing the same, until
I figured out that's the legitimate pronunciation on the east
coast, or at least in parts of it.... never thought I'd be
defending him!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_class_submarine

That's interesting. What do these people say when they discuss
nucleation and that the nucleus of an atom does thus and so.

They say "nuke-you-ler-ray-shun" I guess.

In article <[email hidden]>,

Wayne Pein said:

Qui si parla Campagnolo said:

At least it was a diesel truck, the real future of internal
combustion engines....

Maybe, if they make them smaller and cleaner. Using biodiesel is
good.

A local person my wife knows has apparently had good results with a
diesel Volkswagen converted to burn used cooking oil. It's a dual fuel
system that uses diesel initially to heat the engine running and hot,
then uses a preheater for the cooking oil. You run it on diesel for a
minute or two before shutting it down, too. These folks say they get
about 800 miles on a tank of diesel, since most of the driving is done
on cooking fuel. They get the latter from free from a restaurant near
their house. I dunno how well it's working in the recent cold snap,
though. Cooking oil is a lot thicker than diesel!

In article <[email hidden]>,

Michael Press said:

In article <[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

Wayne Pein said:

But how about this concept: http://www.starrotor.com/Engine.htm

After gazing at hundreds of "miracle engine" articles over the
years, I've decided to ignore any reports that don't include tests
of working models. The only one of those hundreds of designs that
gained any traction was the Wankel, and it didn't set the world on
fire.

That page is way too full of phrases like "...is projected to
have...", "...should be...," "...is expected to be..."

Can you can tell me why gas turbine engines are not practical? They
have run well in races.

Well, they ran fairly competitively on the Indy car circuit for two
years, under the management of Andy Granatelli and his brothers. I
don't recall them actually winning much, but they were darned cool
looking cars. But that's a form of racing that- in those days- involved
the cliché of "stand on the gas pedal and turn left." The cars did not
have to have rapid throttle response and ran very tall gears. The
racing has changed with the addition of road courses, making it more
Gran Prix-like and requiring a different skill set from the drivers and
different designs for the cars.

Bill Westphal said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

BTW, a lot of people laugh at 43 about his pronunciation of the
word "nuclear", and I did too (quietly) when I joined the nuclear
navy and noticed some highly educated people doing the same, until
I figured out that's the legitimate pronunciation on the east
coast, or at least in parts of it.... never thought I'd be
defending him!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_class_submarine

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

That's interesting. What do these people say when they discuss
nucleation and that the nucleus of an atom does thus and so. It
seems to me to be much line the people who cannot say length or
strength, saying lenth and strenth instead. I'm nut sure they have
the musical ear to discern the difference.

Quoted message said:

You got me curious. These were Naval Academy grads and full-fledged
navy nuclear officers (as all submarine officers are). And they
were otherwise normal, with no other speaking anomalies. And I
recall they were easterners, although most other easterners
pronounced it normally, and I never brought it up because no one
ever blinked an eye, and I thought maybe I was off-kilter, so I just
accepted it, and went with my theory all these years. But Wiki (via
Bartleby) has another interesting theory. I didn't realize
Eisenhower, Reagan, AND Carter had the same "affliction" (according
to Bartleby). (And Carter was a Navy Submarine nuke officer
himself.)

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nuclear

That article doesn't answer my question or say that these people are
otherwise linguistically skilled. I wonder how many of them spoke
more than one language. One who masters English and French, for
instance, must have a keen ear for pronunciation. A monolingual
person can get by without ever questioning form or sound and could be
imitating his closest peers. I related the story of the young
engineering officer who described an impact area as being strewn with
"derbis" and had in all his life gotten away with it, possibly talking
to people who knew neither what debris or derbis was.

I found that so elegant a faux pas that ever since I usually say
"derbis" among friends and family. I've mentioned that those who were
among the highest GPA's in college were on occasion not gifted with
great intelligence but rather good short term memory, persons I would
not ask to explain a complex concept. Just because some great people
have great leadership skills, we should not expect them to be equally
skilled in other areas.

Jobst Brandt

Michael Press said:

Can you can tell me why gas turbine engines are not
practical? They have run well in races.

One of the major drawbacks is that a turbine engine uses a significant
percentage of its "full power fuel burn" just idling - don't have the
figures at hand, but I believe it's something near 50%. That's not
gonna work very well for your average commuter, but is less of an
issue on aircraft (where they typically run at nearly full power for
the majority of their lifetime).

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $795 ti frame

In article <[email hidden]>,

Michael Press said:

In article
<[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

Wayne Pein said:

But how about this concept:
http://www.starrotor.com/Engine.htm

After gazing at hundreds of "miracle engine" articles over the years,
I've decided to ignore any reports that don't include tests of working
models. The only one of those hundreds of designs that gained any
traction was the Wankel, and it didn't set the world on fire.

That page is way too full of phrases like "...is projected to have...",
"...should be...," "...is expected to be..."

Can you can tell me why gas turbine engines are not
practical? They have run well in races.

Turbines have an excellent power-weight and power-size ratio. They have
been the powerplant of choice in unlimited hydroplanes for decades.
Their current absence from other motorsports is mainly about bans or
other rules restrictions (displacement formulas, weight penalties), that
act against them. They are the power unit of choice in aircraft and
high-performance boats, where space and weight are at a premium, but the
power requirements are likely to be fairly constant. Stationary power
systems often use a turbine design.

Turbines also have a pretty terrible power-fuel consumption ratio.
They're gas guzzlers, they're slow to respond to throttle-position
changes (imagine turbo lag, except your entire engine is built around
the turbocharger principle), and they cost a lot (how much that would be
improved by greater production volumes is hard for me to know). Oh, and
emissions control is hard.

This 1950s-vintage paper on the trouble with turbines is considerably
older than I am, but still manages to cover the key deficiencies:

http://www.turbinecar.com/obsolete.htm

Piston engines, for all their odd complexity, are pretty good at what
they do, and turbocharging tends to lend them most of the turbine
advantages with few of the deficiencies. Rotaries offer an interesting
compromise between the two designs, but only Mazda has come close to
conquering the reliability and port-sealing challenges with rotaries.

Turbines are usable in passenger cars; that turbinecar domain above has
some neat stuff about the majestic Chrysler Turbine Car project, but
after a big pilot project, they tossed it aside.

--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos

In article <[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

Bill Westphal said:

Quoted message said:

> BTW, a lot of people laugh at 43 about his pronunciation of the
> word "nuclear", and I did too (quietly) when I joined the nuclear
> navy and noticed some highly educated people doing the same, until
> I figured out that's the legitimate pronunciation on the east
> coast, or at least in parts of it.... never thought I'd be
> defending him!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_class_submarine

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

That's interesting. What do these people say when they discuss
nucleation and that the nucleus of an atom does thus and so. It
seems to me to be much line the people who cannot say length or
strength, saying lenth and strenth instead. I'm nut sure they have
the musical ear to discern the difference.

Quoted message said:

You got me curious. These were Naval Academy grads and full-fledged
navy nuclear officers (as all submarine officers are). And they
were otherwise normal, with no other speaking anomalies. And I
recall they were easterners, although most other easterners
pronounced it normally, and I never brought it up because no one
ever blinked an eye, and I thought maybe I was off-kilter, so I just
accepted it, and went with my theory all these years. But Wiki (via
Bartleby) has another interesting theory. I didn't realize
Eisenhower, Reagan, AND Carter had the same "affliction" (according
to Bartleby). (And Carter was a Navy Submarine nuke officer
himself.)

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nuclear

That article doesn't answer my question or say that these people are
otherwise linguistically skilled. I wonder how many of them spoke
more than one language. One who masters English and French, for
instance, must have a keen ear for pronunciation. A monolingual
person can get by without ever questioning form or sound and could be
imitating his closest peers. I related the story of the young
engineering officer who described an impact area as being strewn with
"derbis" and had in all his life gotten away with it, possibly talking
to people who knew neither what debris or derbis was.

There seems to be a tendency for certain subcultures to share not only a
lingo but also an accent:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/opinion/30brooks.html?ex=1259557200&en=
4b9e0ffb63745a02&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt

Paragraph 6: "Tom Wolfe once noticed that at a certain moment all
airline pilots came to speak like Chuck Yeager."

It's a reference to a memorable passage from _The Right Stuff_ in which
Wolfe describes the laconic Texas drawl that pilots tend to acquire,
even if they grew up in the Bronx.

Certainly, a multilingual speaker is more likely to understand the
subtleties of grammar and pronunciation, but to the Cantonese speaker,
the gross and scope of us must seem tone-deaf.

--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos