Abstract
On the Radiation from Gases. IN the first and second reports of the committee reference was made to the part played by radiation in the cooling of the products of an explosion, and to its bearing on the measurements of volumetric and specific heat with which those reports were principally concerned. The general question of radiation from heated gases has, however, from the point of view of the committee, an interest and importance of its own which are sufficient to justify a detailed study of it in its wider aspects. Radiation plays a part comparable with that of conduction in determining the heat-flow from the gas to the cylinder walls in the gas engine, and it is this flow of heat which is the most important peculiarity of the gas engine, and to which are chiefly due the leading characteristics of its design. Even to the uninstructed eye the most obvious features about large internal-combustion engines are the arrangements for cooling, and the great size and weight for a given power which is necessitated mainly by those arrangements. The difficulties which the designer has to meet are due in the main to the stresses set up by the temperature gradients which are necessary to sustain the flow of heat. In the present state of the art it is probable that the most important service which science could render to the gas-engine constructor. would be to establish definitely the principles upon which depends the heat-flow from hot gases into cold metal with which they are in contact, and thus to enable him to predict the effect upon heat-flow of changes in the temperature, density, or composition of the charge, and in the state of the cylinder walls.
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References
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Radiation from Heated Gases 1 . Nature 85, 186–190 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/085186a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/085186a0