There was a manufacture's love affair for the Napier sleeve valve aircraft engine that continued despite it readily apparent draw backs. Mostly in the early days it used a lot of oil that slipped out the exhaust and its tendency to slobber the oil over everything. Then came the Whirlwind twin engine fighter . They only built 100 of them . The twenty four , H form , engine , had a tendency to after fire , back fire , and unexpectedly violently explode. The manufacture of course tried to blame the pilots . Considering the loss of pilots cost the government more than the aircraft the Government started listening to all the complaints about the manufacture of the engines and the aircraft.
I wonder if a successful sleeve valve engine could be built with modern materials or would the cost of the materials would be too high . Also what would be the market for even a small sleeve valve engine?
Death of the Sleeve Valve Aircraft engine
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Re: Death of the Sleeve Valve Aircraft engine
The Whirlwind was powered by Peregrines. There didn't seem to be anything especially wrong with that engine, it just needed some more development. Which it never got cause of RR guessing wrong - it was too small. They cancelled it to focus development effort on the Merlin. Pretty sure the Whirlwind was too small to take any other properly developed (*finished*) engine so with no engine it became a dead end.
Bristol developed a series of sleeve valve radial engines, the Hercules and Centaurus were pretty successful and built (especially the Hercules) in large numbers. Centaurus was the engine in the Sea Fury.
As I understand it, sleeve valve designs have certain theoretical advantages (you always see references to papers by Harry Ricardo) over conventional valves, as well as disadvantages. It turned out to be easier to deal with the disadvantages of the conventional valves, leaving sleeve valve designs with relatively small advantages you pay too much for.
Turbine engines made it all largely moot.
Bristol developed a series of sleeve valve radial engines, the Hercules and Centaurus were pretty successful and built (especially the Hercules) in large numbers. Centaurus was the engine in the Sea Fury.
As I understand it, sleeve valve designs have certain theoretical advantages (you always see references to papers by Harry Ricardo) over conventional valves, as well as disadvantages. It turned out to be easier to deal with the disadvantages of the conventional valves, leaving sleeve valve designs with relatively small advantages you pay too much for.
Turbine engines made it all largely moot.
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Sanity is the process by which you continually adjust your beliefs so they are predictively sound. -esr
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Re: Death of the Sleeve Valve Aircraft engine
Konigsegg cars use rotary valve engines. That might be a better idea, now
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Re: Death of the Sleeve Valve Aircraft engine
There was some interest in them like a decade ago, iirc it was Coates who had come out with an updated design, for F1 cars..
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