Book Reviews Rev. 11 WANKEL TYPE ROTARY ENGINES * The definitive book on the rotary is simply called "ROTARY ENGINE" by Kenichi Yamamoto published by Toyo Kogyo Co. Ltd. (Mazda) in 1969. This is a highly technical book chronicling the development of the wankel by Mazda. Kenichi is an engineer and has risen to CEO of Mazda. * This book on the rotary is also called "ROTARY ENGINE" by Kenichi Yamamoto published by Sankaido Co. Ltd. Second edition published in 1981. This is an updated version of the first "ROTARY ENGINE" book. Confusing eh what? This book has a much greater emphasis on emissions. * Another technical book on the Wankel rotary engine is; "The Wankel RC Engine Design and Performance" by R.F.Ansdale Published by A.S. Barnes & Company Lib of Cong 69-18692 * The Wankel engine Design Development Application by Jan P. Norbye. Chilton Book Company. ISBN 0-8019-5591-2 Published in 1971. A little history and results of the Wankel engine development by NSU, Mercedes, Mazda and others and some results of work by Curtiss-Wright. Also some history on all rotary engines. Not as technical as I would like but not bad. These books will be easier to find then the Toyo Kogyo book. * Mazda 4-Rotor Rotary Engine for the Le Mans 24-Hour Endurance Race. (Mazda won the race outright beating all of the famous European race car builders.) Ritsuharu Shimizu, Tomoo Tadokoro, Toru Nakanishi, and Junici Funamoto Mazda Motor Corporation. SAE paper 920309. By far the best technical paper on the Mazda Wankel type rotary engine. Lots of information on how to make a powerful, normally aspirated, light weight all aluminum, heavy duty rotary engine. * Many other SAE papers were published by Mazda engineers. * Test of Thermal-Barrier and Wear Coats in Rotary Engines. NASA Tech Briefs LEW-16512 by Paul Moller. Self explanatory title. Work based on the OMC all aluminum snow-mobile engine. * Curtiss Wright published quite a few SAE papers back in the 60's and 70's on their development of the rotary for aircraft use. * Engine Revolutions: The Autobiography of Max Bentele. Max was intimately involved in the early development of the Wankel rotary engine both while in Germany and in the U.S. while working for Curtiss Wright and Lycoming. One or two chapters on the history of the Wankel type rotary engine development. COOLING SYSTEMS. * Aerodynamics of Propulsion. D. Kuchemann & J. Weber McGraw-Hill Book Company Inc. 1953 Lib. Of Cong. Card # 52-6541 The bible of the aerodynamic design of scoops and ducts. Also covers ducted propellers. * Compact Heat Exchangers. W.M. Kays and A. L. London Kreiger Publishing Company. Malabar Florida. 1998 The bible of heat exchangers. Some work on ducts (called headers in this book). Very comprehensive. Every few years the American Society of Mechanical Engineers holds symposiums on heat transfer. Same for the Instate of Mechanical Engineers AKA IMechE London and the SAE. Lately the automotive industry is getting so competitive this kind of info is drying up. AIRCRAFT and all other types of intermittent ICE's IN GENERAL * Sky Ranch Engineering Manual. This book presents an excellent overview of the problems of aircraft engines. It is 500 pages and a bargain at only $23. There are many details on the materials and processes used to build a successful aircraft engine. There is a very good and exhaustive discussion of destructive torsional vibrations and fatigue. The telephone number to buy this book is (916) 421 7672. The author is John Schwaner. John is highly thought of in the experimental aircraft community. * For those of you with an engineering degree or equivalent Taylor's series of books is the best there is. The bible of engine design. The Internal Combustion Engine in Theory and Practice. Volume 1: Thermodynamics, Fluid Flow, Performance. Second Edition Revised. Volume 2: Combustion, Fuels, Materials, Design. Revised. Charles Fayette Taylor. The MIT Press Cambridge Massachusetts, and London England. AutoBooks in Burbank CA. *Advanced engine technology by Heinz Heisler. Published by the SAE in 1995. An up to date treatment of the latest technology as applied to the piston engine. * Introduction to the Study of Aircraft Vibration and Flutter by Robert H. Scanlan & Robert Rosenbaum, Dover Publications touches on crankshaft design. Lib Cong 68-22341. * Photo-Elastic Analysis by A. W. Hendry, Pergamon Press investigates stress concentrations in complex machine parts such as crankshafts and connecting rods. Lib of Cong # 65-29062. Only recently has computer finite element analysis developed to the point of perhaps doing a better job on crankshafts than these techniques invented in the 30's. The book has a great bibliography on the subject. * I can highly recommend a book by Herschel Smith called "A History of Aircraft Piston Engines" published by Sunflower University Press Inc. 1531 Yuma, Manhattan, Kansas 66502-4228. ISBN 0-07-058472-9. 629.134'352 in a good library. This is a reprint of a book originally published by McGraw Hill in 1981. Fourth printing 1993. There are 250, 8.5 by 11 pages. It chronicles the evolution of the aircraft engine from early days to the present. There are many tables listing every engine ever put in an airplane with all important specifications including weight, horsepower, RPM, configuration and in some cases BSFC. There are many photos and drawings of all types of aircraft engines. This is as close to a bible of aircraft engine history that I have found so far. About $22. * Vee's For Victory! by Daniel D. Witney. An extensive and comprehensive book on the history and engineering of the Allison V-1700 liquid cooled aircraft engine. 8.5 by 11, hard bound, 470 pages. $59.95. Schiffer Military History. Atglen PA ISBN:0-7643-0561-1 * Schneider Trophy Racers by Robert S. Hirsch. Motorbooks International Osceola WI. Excellent history of the water cooled V12 leading up to the Merlin. Lots of good drawings done by the author and photos. * Thompson Trophy Racers. Roger Huntington. Motorbooks International. 1989 ISBN 0-87938-365-8. $19.95. 8.5" by 11" 188 pages. Fascinating reading. Lots of good mechanical drawings, photos and cut-aways on aircraft engines plus a good history of the development of aircraft engines for air racing. * The development of Piston Aero Engines by Bill Gunston 1993, 1994, 1995. ISBN 1 85260 385 2. Patrick Stevens Limited/Haynes Publishing Sparkford Nr Yeovil, Somerset, BA227JJ. Hard bound 213 pages. $39.95 at the Wright Pat Air force Museum. The first half of the book is on basic principles and engine design. For the most part this is very well done for the non-physicist non-engineer reader. The middle is a history of of the development of aircraft engines. The author criticizes Fiat compared to Rolls-Royce for not developing high HP per cubic inch while still acknowledging that the V24 Fiat powered Macchi MC.72 still holds the world's seaplane record set in 1934 at 440 MPH! Sounds like a little British Empire envy to me. HP per cubic inch is irrelevant when it comes to aircraft engines. What really counts is continuous HP per pound and continuous HP per square foot of engine frontal area. There is no replacement for displacement. The last chapter; "Chapter 8 Piston Engines Today and Tomorrow" categorizes engines by air cooled, liquid cooled, diesels and unconventional. All engines are included world wide no matter how obscure starting with low power engines for ultra-lights through auto engine conversions. The major fault with this chapter is all engines are listed from PR information regardless if they have flown or even run for that matter. Teledyne Continental is given almost equal weight with TTL (UK). Ever hear of TTL (UK)? In the case of auto engine conversions he quotes Blanton with his Ford V6 powered Cessna 175 that supposedly cruised faster than the GO-300 (geared opposed) model and unrealistically burned 6.8 gallons an hour (90 HP at 0.45 BSFC) instead of 12 gallons per hour for the GO-300 (157 HP at 0.45 BSFC) without checking the numbers. Bill Gunston should know better. I think Bill Gunston is a little gullible. Other than that the book seems to be excellent. * SAE Paper # 871042 0148-7191/87/0428-1042 $2.50 Design and Development of the Voyager 200/300 Liquid Cooled Aircraft Engine by R.E. Wilkinson. Twenty pages. Published in 1987. This paper is about the engine used in the Rutan Voyager around-the-world un-refueled record holder. If you never read anything else about any kind of engine you must read this paper. It is by far the most informative and up to date information on liquid cooled engines there is. The real critical limitations of the aluminum head engine are thoroughly explored. That is; the temperature of the metal immediately adjacent to the combustion chamber. Aluminum loses half of it's fatigue life when the temperature goes up from 250 degrees to 500 degrees F. Therefor this temperature limits the amount of continuous power obtainable from any engine whether air-cooled or liquid cooled. Just because the coolant temp. is less than 220 degrees F does not mean the metal next to the combustion chamber is anywhere near that at high power levels. The continuous HP requirements are far higher for an aircraft engine than they are for an auto engine or pickup truck engine. The Automotive manufacturers rarely publish any real information about engines in the SAE due to the highly competitive nature of the automobile marketplace. This paper is an outstanding exception for the SAE. A must read bargain of real information. * Smithsonian Air & Space magazine article "Power Struggle" by Don Sherman, January 1997, page 72. Excellent ten page article (with many pictures) about auto engines in airplanes. A brief history of all auto engines in airplanes and a more detailed history of the twenty year, twenty million dollar development of the Chevy V8 based, all aluminum Orenda liquid cooled aircraft engine. At this time (Jan 1997) and well after the article was written the engine failed its FAA 150 hour full power certification test due to a crankshaft problem after 20 years of very expensive development. It was finally certified in 1998 by Transport Canada. Extensive changes have been made to the basic Chevy big block engine including a parallel cooling system with dual coolant pumps as opposed to the serial cooling system with single pump as typically found in automotive engines. Parallel cooling systems were considered to be essential in the 1920's on liquid cooled aircraft engines. Engine length is almost everything to a car designer. Engine cooling compromises are made by simezing the cylinder walls in automotive engines. Crankshaft life at high continuous power is compromised by shortening the length, leaving too little room for adequate size journal fillet radii. In my opinion this engine will not be successful until it is re-designed from a clean sheet of paper to be a real aircraft engine. If that happens they might as well go to a horizontal opposed configuration for lighter weight. Orenda is now in the process of moving the project to Nova Scotia and injecting another 32 million dollars of mostly Canadian government money. They are also attempting to market the engine to the homebuilt market. I don't expect many takers at over $100K per engine. Recently Lancair gave up after spending a lot of money installing the engine in a special airplane called the Lancair Tigress. The engine and the Tigress were donated to the EAA museum as a tax write off. The Orenda company is now bankrupt. "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." * SAE Paper 690302. Designing Cast Components for V8 Engines. J.L. Fitz et. al. Central Foundry Division of GM. Written before GM clamped a lid on all real information published by their engineers in the form of SAE papers. This paper is about the trials and tribulations of making an engine work as designed by the stylist and using chewing gum materials as specified by the bean counters. * SAE paper 841221 Development of Powder-Forged Connecting Rods by K. Imaahashi, C. Tsumuki, & I. Nagare. Toyota Motor Corp. The conversion of Kg/mm^2 to P.S.I is by multiplying Kg/mm^2 by 1.45. The Toyoto rods, according to this paper, are about as good as forged SAE 10L55. Aircraft engine rods are made from forged 4340 which has at least a 25% better fatigue life than forged SAE 10L55. * V-6 BUICK FORD & CHEVY 90 deg./60 deg. Performance. by Pat Ganahl CARTECH 1988 ISBN 0-931472-13-X $18.95 I normally don't recommend books of this genre as they do not have the detailed and factual engineering information such as BSFC, stress and heat rejection information necessary to successfully adapt and auto engine to aircraft use. What this book does, in it's introduction and crankshaft chapters, is discuss the myriad compromises that led to the 90 degree V6 auto engine. The real reason such a fundamentally mechanically unbalanced and problematical design is used in cars is revealed. I.E. the properly designed, high displacement, 60 degree V6 is too tall for modern car styling and the 90 deg. V6 can be made on the same production line as the V8. Consider this book one that should be read on why you should not put a 90 degree V6 in your airplane. Besides, all V and in-line engines are trying to jam their crankshafts out the bottom of their blocks anyway. This is one of the reasons they are inevitably heavier than opposed engines. * Hotrod Magazine. GEN III. The first look at the all new GM small-block V8 LS1. By Jeff Smith. Page 50, September 1996. Normally auto magazines do not publish the material specifications for auto engine parts. This article on the AL alloy block Chevy V8 LS1 engine is an exception. Crank, rods and main bearing caps are specified as either cast iron or powdered metal. Chevy actually went down on the valve stem diameter to reduce the valve weight. This is not what is needed for good heat rejection in high duty cycle engines. Lots of other engine details are included. * Metallurgy Fundamentals Daniel A. Brandt The Goodhart Willcox Comp. Inc 1992 ISBN 0-87006-922-5 Lib of Congress 91-22280 Lots of data on heat treating, hardness, properties of steel, crystal structure, failure & deformation, microscopic structure, surface hardening, etc. and stress. * GM Performance Parts 1997 Parts Catalog. $6.95 at your friendly GM dealer. GM may put chewing gum cast iron and powdered metal parts in their light duty engines installed in their passenger cars and trucks but they will be glad to sell you the 4340 chrome molly good stuff in the parts catalog. Of course all other manufactures are putting chewing gum parts in their passenger car engines as well. I am not singling out GM. * Allied Aircraft Piston Engines of World War II by Grame White published by the Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc. 400 Copyright 1995. Commonwealth Drive Warrendale PA 15096-0001 (412) 7765 4841 Fax (412) 776 5760 8.5" by 11" hard bound 400 pages. ISBN 1-56091- 655-9. Lots of good drawings, excellent cutaways and illustrations as well as photographs. Surprisingly not technical despite the publisher. This is a well researched book with extensive references but rather disappointing to me as I would like to see a lot more technical information about power curves verses BSFC, engine weights, TBO's and such. I expected a lot more from the SAE. Therefor this expensive book is NOT recommended. * Scientific Design of Exhaust and Intake Systems. Philip H. Smith and John C. Morrison Published by Robert Bentley. ISBN 0-8376-0309-9 http://www.rb.com I have nothing to do financially with any of these publishers. Feel free to send this list of books and papers to anyone who may be interested in engines. Paul Lamar