Abstract
THE Air Ministry has issued some particulars of the first British heavy oil aeroplane engine. The Rolls Royce ‘Condor’ compression ignition engine has successfully passed an Air Ministry test of 50 hoursr and flight tests are now being undertaken in a Hawker ‘Horsley’ aeroplane. The engine has been developed from the ‘Condor’ petrol aeroplane engine, which has been strengthened where necessary to take the increased forces due to the raising of the compression ratio from 6½ to 12½. The maximum explosion pressure within the cylinders is 800 Ib. per square inch. At the normal speed of 1,900 revolutions per minute, the engine develops 500 brake horse power. The increase in weight over that of the petrol engine is less than ten per cent, the engine weight being 1,504 Ib. or 3 Ib. per brake horse power, a weight-power ratio which represents a very large reduction over that of the Beardmore ‘Tornado’ engines installed in the airship R 101. As a petrol engine, the Rolls-Royce ‘Condor’ has a weight-power ratio of approximately 2 Ib. per brake horse power. Assuming that the fuel consumption of the heavy oil engine is twenty-five per cent less than that of the petrol engine, there should be a saving in the total weight of engine and fuel for a lengthy flight such as the present types of aeroplanes are capable of making. In addition, the experimental flight tests are intended to investigate the extent to which the size of the radiator and the weight of cooling water can be reduced as compared with standard petrol engines.
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Heavy Oil Aeroplane Engine. Nature 130, 769 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130769c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130769c0