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re Heat conduction of sleeves
Ricardo stated:
(2) That a moving sleeve, provided that only a thin oil film was maintained, appeared to be almost transparent to heat.
"The High-Speed Internal-Combustion Engine", Ricardo, Fourth Edition, 1954 Reprint, p349. [Ricardo made significant changes between editions.]
Fedden's paper "The Development of the Mono-Sleeve Valve for Aero Engines" Feb, 1939 stated in response to a question:
"I must again emphasize Mr. Ricardo's remarks about the transparency of the sleeve and the rubbing motion of the oil film, which is the real crux of that problem."
I had to do a heat transfer calculation on a 1/2" pipe at 1300°F, and was surprised to see that the temperature difference across the carbon steel pipe was 0.84 K. I changed the conduction coefficient to that of KE965 and the thickness to 1/8" and ran calcs from 2500°F to 500°F. I found that the temperature difference across the sleeve varied from 8 K at 2500°F to 0.5 K at 500°F. For me there seems no reason to doubt Ricardo's claim, with the same caveat - the oil film must be maintained.
The Knight engine used two sleeves and was quite successful as far as sleeve valve engines go.Close but no cigar:
If sleeve is just moving up and down, there are 3 issues:
1. You are stopping and start the motion of the sleeve similar to what is happening with the piston. So, you need a similar crank and rods - the sleeve crank only needs to be running 1/2 of the main crank but they are still going to be substantial items.
2. You need sleeve inside of a sleeve (dual sleeves) if you want to be able to properly control the timing of the intake and exhaust cycles. If you thought it was challenging with piston inside of sleeve inside the block, add another sleeve. The inner sleeve needs to extend past the outer sleeve which makes it longer = heavier.
3. And to paraphrase D Deleted member 68059 from the Sleeve Valves at high rpms thread, the multiple oil films over the large surface area of the all the sleeves adds internal friction.
The rotating motion of the Bristol and Napier drives was both smoother and allowed ports to be "timed".
The sleeve material has to meet many criteria, however the essential requirement was identical thermal expansion at the sleeve OD and barrel ID interface. To make it more complicated the later Hercules and Centaurus had tapered bores. I understand that the clearance had to be 0.8 thou around the entire bore. In the paper I attached earlier, Mr Evans from Bristol stated " I would say that sleeve and barrel clearances are almost negligible. The sleeve is almost a push-fit in the barrel, but there is no difficulty in producing sleeves and barrels to the tolerances we require." p657. He earlier stated "With the sleeve valve the difficulty has always been to prevent over-lubrication, but we have been able to cope with the problem. As an instance, I would mention the sleeve valve or sleeve ball rig which we use on a mechanical breakdown test. Mr. Mansell had a great deal of trouble with overflow from the sleeve of this rig, and we had to fit a cover. The single sleeve acts as a good oil pump, unless the oil flow is controlled at the bottom end." p655. Thus a lack of oil is not an issue and there is likely not enough space for a void bubble to form.There are certainly many metal alloys with very good heat conductivity. I suspect we shouldn't discount the effect of the oil film, particularly if there are voids (bubbles) in the film, that could cause the heat conductivity to drop dramatically. If the interface between the cylinder wall and the sleeve insulate the sleeve, it doesn't help that much if the sleeve itself has good heat conductivity.
The enginehistory.org site has a paper about sleeve valves referring to two articles by Fedden [1] and Hives [2] claiming a measured 50C difference in piston temps vs a comparable poppet valve engine. If this is representative of sleeve valve engines in general, that's quite a huge difference.
[1] Fedden, A.H.R., "Aircraft Power Plants – Past and Future," Journal of the Royal Aeronautic Society, Vol. 48, pp. 397-459, October 1944.
[2] Hives, E.W. and Smith, F.L., "High Output Aircraft Engines," SAE Journal, Vol. 46, No. 3, pp. 106-117, March 1940.
Yesssss... with very low BMEP and power ratings, and enormous oil consuption !The Knight engine used two sleeves and was quite successful as far as sleeve valve engines go.
Epiphany moment: How do you fit the 2nd spark plug on H-24 with poppet valves?Second possibly stupid question for the day: was there any particular advantage of sleeve valves for the H-24 engine layout, or 24 cylinder engines in general?
I know with 2-row radials it was harder (not impossible) to make 4 poppet valves per cylinder work, compared with single row radials or V-12s.
Is there any similar logic for why Napier and RR went for sleeve valves on the Sabre and Eagle (also the X-24 Exe and Pennine) despite not being 'all in' on sleeve valves for everything like Bristol was? Alternatively it could just be a coincidence of two technologies coming into vogue at the same time, but it's interesting that RR kept playing with it late war when the Bristol radials and Sabre had been so troublesome and RR had done so well with poppet valves.
Possibly relevant:
- In older H-24s the Napier Dagger had 2 poppet valves per cylinder and the Fairey Monarch 3. The X-24 Vulture had 4.
- The Wiki Sabre page says: "The layout of the H-block, with its inherent balance and the Sabre's relatively short stroke, allowed it to run at a higher rate of rotation, to deliver more power from a smaller displacement, provided that good volumetric efficiency could be maintained (with better breathing), which sleeve valves could do.[6]" Which I understand as saying sleeve valves help you turn high revs which is often (not always) the goal with 24 cylinder layouts?
Epiphany moment: How do you fit the 2nd spark plug on H-24 with poppet valves?
DOHC moves the cam out of the way, but you haven't resolved the issue of no space between the 4 valve springs for the spark plug tube. And WWII airplane spark plugs aren't the slim things that automobiles use today.If they changed from SOHC to DOHC they would have space to put one spark plug, at least, on top of the cylinder head.
Yes, Dagger is another example of having to spread the cylinder blocks further apart to be able to package all the components. It's even worse than Monarch.See Dagger...
Yes, Dagger is another example of having to spread the cylinder blocks further apart to be able to package all the components. It's even worse than Monarch.
Monarch has the crankshafts interfacing the propeller reduction gear at roughly 8 and 4 o'clock positions - which has advantage of raising propeller.
Dagger had the crankshafts at 9 and 3 - as far apart as possible and still engage. propeller reduction gear. Again allowing the crankshafts to be very close together.
the crankshafts as close as possible without interfering, therefore needing lay shafts between the crankshafts and propeller gear
That is fascinating. The British propensity for complication (think BRM V-16 and H-16 Grand Prix engines) is apparent. My personal favorite is the North British Sliding Cylinder marine diesel.A Dagger section.
OHV and OHC (with automatic hydraulic tappets) , but combustion chamber is rather flat, and valves angle low.
And spark plugs are diametrically opposed.
I agree and the odd Siemens-Halske counter rotary engines just amaze me, with the crankshaft rotating in one direction, and the crank case rotating in the opposite direction, it took some time for me to figure out how you actually bolt the engine onto the aircraft!I've always found the rotary engines of WWI to be fascinating too.