New Aircraft Motors in Great Britain
Item
-
Title (Dublin Core)
-
New Aircraft Motors in Great Britain
-
Article Title and/or Image Caption (Dublin Core)
-
Britain Builds Sleeve-Valve Motors for Her New Aircraft
-
extracted text (Extract Text)
-
SLEEVE-VALVE motors, which have
been found to be more efficient and eco-
nomical than the poppet-valve type
used on ordinary aircraft, and less vulner-
able because they have no gear outside the
cylinders, are now standard equipment on
Britain's Beaufort bombers and alternative
equipment on her Short Stirling bombers.
Other features which give the new motor
preference over the old are that the top of
the combustion space can be made hemi-
spherical which, with a central spark plug,
reduces detonation; that equal cooling is
permitted over all; and that with a given
fuel higher compression can be achieved.
British manufacturers have found that
fitting the sleeve in the cylinder and “phras-
ing” the sleeve (finishing the ports to shape)
are delicate operations best performed by
“lady fingers” —which explains the wide use
of women workers in the production of these
1,425-horsepower, § and 14-cylinder motors.
Because they need no top overhauling be-
tween the times when they are completely
overhauled, the motors are most practical
under conditions where airports are remote.
British methods of manufacture, which
include much hand work, make it compara-
tively easy to produce these finely made
motors, But if the Napier “Sabre”—a
new British motor of sleeve-valve design,
claimed to be the most efficient yet—is to
be made in the United States, it will pro-
vide a stimulating challenge to the ac-
curacy of American high-speed, mass-pro-
duction methods.
-
Language (Dublin Core)
-
eng
-
Date Issued (Dublin Core)
-
1943-12
-
pages (Bibliographic Ontology)
-
70
-
Rights (Dublin Core)
-
Public Domain (Google digitized)
-
Archived by (Dublin Core)
-
Matteo Ridolfi
-
Alberto Bordignon (Supervisor)
Popular Science Monthly, vol. 143, n. 6, 1943
