Is Taylor a useful reference for racing engine design?

[Steve Salesky]

My father was an EE. When he started out the slide rule was the norm for calculations. In the early '70's HP came out with the digital calculator which he quickly bought and used in place of the slide rule. He used to lay out PC board with tape, in the early '80's the PC and programs to lay out pc boards came out and bye bye went the tape. In the mid '80's OTP microcontrollers became available and the designs became no longer all hardware based. In the '90's electronic simulation programs became popular and before making a prototype we developed the designs with a simulator. All along the product results and ability became better.

The basic laws of physic's do not change, but the tools to apply it all and see trends has advanced a lot. Materials and techniques have advanced a lot too. IMHO design work is a lot about educated guesses based on prior knowledge and experience, with the latter being more important in deciding what is relevant for a given problem. In the end believe and work to understand real world results.

I was told once, don't know how true, but anyway, that back in the '60's part of FoMoCo's engine development program was to run prototype engines on the dyno under full load for days and weeks at a time. If say they broke the block, they would add more material in the area. When it passed the full time without failure they called it good. So much for what the book said.

I'd never take something written in a book as gospel. Reading books is great for gaining a general understanding, but I've found the devil is in the detail. For that you need to get your hands dirty and is the experience from that verification that matters in getting it right. I've always found the best college professors were the ones that actually worked in the field. Best way to learn is put the books down and get to working with experienced designers in the field who have been there, done that, are working on real world projects and problems.

Just my 2 cents,

Steve

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

Just Google BMW rear en cracks.

I Googled it and found and example from 1999, 2000 an 2001 which means it was designed in about 1997 or before. Being BMW, they would have been using CATIA 3. CATIA 3 wasn't capable of modeling a car in3D solids needed for FEA so don't blame FEA for that, it wasn't involved.

Now it is like a bank clerk is asked to build a sub frame for BMW understanding only how to use a computer.

That isn't exactly how it works. In recent years the car companies are very into reuse of design and parts, so they are taking their best designers and having them make parametric templates of their best designs. The advantage of this is they are allowed to spend much more time on the design because other people will build variations of it. We are just now entering the era where part of the design involves building in FEA analysis so that when a variation is made, the design can be validated at minimal expense. That sounds simple but there is a long journey from the software being capable of doing it and companies implementing it for everything they do. One of the projects I have been working on for the past 2 years automatically checks the 3D designs to make sure that they conform to the 1,000s of pages of government regulations for all countries around the world. This has saves massive amounts of tedious work that doesn't really improve much.
I'll give you an example, there is a regulation for what the sharpest radius can be on an air duct opening on the hood or fender of a car in some countries. The regulation specifies a different radius dimension if the opening is fake (blocked off), open or ducted. The software caught the radius that was too sharp. If it had gone into production and discovered then, the cost could have been in the $10s of millions. No person can remember all of those regulations and they can't afford to have 100s of people checking them all the time.

[1989TransAm]

"My father was an EE. When he started out the slide rule was the norm for calculations. In the early '70's HP came out with the digital calculator which he quickly bought and used in place of the slide rule. He used to lay out PC board with tape, in the early '80's the PC and programs to lay out pc boards came out and bye bye went the tape. In the mid '80's OTP microcontrollers became available and the designs became no longer all hardware based. In the '90's electronic simulation programs became popular and before making a prototype we developed the designs with a simulator. All along the product results and ability became better."

Boy, can I relate to that although my degree was in a different field. Brings back old memories including doing the PC boards with tape. I still have the slide rule and the calculator from the era. Even my T-bar and portable drafting table.

[Erland Cox]

FEA has been used for a longtime in different programs. I remember SAAB using it for sheet thickness in their 9000 and that car is from 1984.
So what happened when the program did not compute the BMW cars right, how do you do to correct the program?

Erland

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

Boy, can I relate to that although my degree was in a different field. Brings back old memories including doing the PC boards with tape. I still have the slide rule and the calculator from the era. Even my T-bar and portable drafting table

I had the Vemco one with the slides, never stayed parralel enough, I think it was about $750 plus the $1,200 table in 82.
I just bought a new laptop compter last weekend for my wife for $300 that is faster than my workstation.

[Stan Weiss]

My father was an EE. When he started out the slide rule was the norm for calculations. In the early '70's HP came out with the digital calculator which he quickly bought and used in place of the slide rule. He used to lay out PC board with tape, in the early '80's the PC and programs to lay out pc boards came out and bye bye went the tape. In the mid '80's OTP microcontrollers became available and the designs became no longer all hardware based. In the '90's electronic simulation programs became popular and before making a prototype we developed the designs with a simulator. All along the product results and ability became better.

The basic laws of physic's do not change, but the tools to apply it all and see trends has advanced a lot. Materials and techniques have advanced a lot too. IMHO design work is a lot about educated guesses based on prior knowledge and experience, with the latter being more important in deciding what is relevant for a given problem. In the end believe and work to understand real world results.

I was told once, don't know how true, but anyway, that back in the '60's part of FoMoCo's engine development program was to run prototype engines on the dyno under full load for days and weeks at a time. If say they broke the block, they would add more material in the area. When it passed the full time without failure they called it good. So much for what the book said.

I'd never take something written in a book as gospel. Reading books is great for gaining a general understanding, but I've found the devil is in the detail. For that you need to get your hands dirty and is the experience from that verification that matters in getting it right. I've always found the best college professors were the ones that actually worked in the field. Best way to learn is put the books down and get to working with experienced designers in the field who have been there, done that, are working on real world projects and problems.

Just my 2 cents,

Steve

I have heard through a second party than some of that testing still goes on at GM.

Stan

[Kevin Johnson]

First rule for the dedicated student -- always check out the validity and specific application of what people tell you. Example:

The Gen 5 crankshaft is forged from a 1538MV twisted steel and features induction hardened journals along with intermediate pin drills.

Read more: http://www.gmhightechperformance.com/ho ... z2N4gRip8F

Versus:

In order to reduce wear crank pins and journals are hardened by local heat treating of the surfaces either by flame or by electric induction.

Terrible advice.

Taking this into account:

There was a comprehensive computer-aided and physical testing regimen for the Gen 5 engine development. This included steady-state airflow assessments, 3D computation fluid dynamics, airflow bench testing, one dimensional, engine cycle simulation, geometric flame propagation analysis, 3D mixing and combustion analysis, single and multi-cylinder combustion testing, and vehicle-level performance and fuel economy analysis. Thirty analysts worked digitally on the engine development program, literally years before the first physical model was produced. They used both commercially available CAE/CAD software as well as specially developed code. It is estimated that there were more than 10-million hours of computational analysis for the engine development.

http://www.autofieldguide.com/articles/ ... ble-engine

I suspect now we may be treated to a denigration of the engineering at GM ala that of Porsche.

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

Yawn, notice the topic "RACING ENGINE DESIGN" twisted forgings and induction hardeneing are methods to make economical parts, not racing parts.

[Kevin Johnson]

On Page 22 of Machine Design by Norton (3rd ed 2006) he cites the loss of the Mars Probe in 1999 due to NASA and Lockheed Aerospace failing to notice a unit conversion issue.

On page 926 in the FEA section of his text, Norton points back to this footnote.

On Page 905, the opening page of Finite Element Analysis, he quotes:

If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.

Foolish practice to rely on virtual analysis (FEA, CAD, and the like) without understanding history and theory that came before. How do you know your FEA results are any good without checking via hand calculations or comparing to prior work?

We do much better than checking them against hand calculations. There is a continual development loop validating that the simulation results accurately predict what happens in reality. When these cod4es are developed it isn't just done by some guy with a computer and a bright idea. Someone with a problem to solve and deep pockets pays for directed development to add a specific capability to the software to simulate a phenomena that they have observed and quantified.

It is so reliable that this is possible to get right on the 1st attempt using common out of the box software that anyone can buy.

Seven minutes of terror.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.php?id=1090

[Kevin Johnson]

Yawn, notice the topic "RACING ENGINE DESIGN" twisted forgings and induction hardeneing are methods to make economical parts, not racing parts.

Yawn.

Please point me to the thousands of hours of actual dyno cell testing of your designs. I think GM can back up what they say with a 100,000 mile warranty. Not all races end in 5 seconds.

[Stan Weiss]

Yawn, notice the topic "RACING ENGINE DESIGN" twisted forgings and induction hardeneing are methods to make economical parts, not racing parts.

Jon,
Maybe you need to state what level of racing you are talking about. There are way more bracket racers that Top fuel racers.

Stan

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

Yawn, notice the topic "RACING ENGINE DESIGN" twisted forgings and induction hardeneing are methods to make economical parts, not racing parts.

Jon,
Maybe you need to state what level of racing you are talking about. There are way more bracket racers that Top fuel racers.

Stan

Professional level racing where parts are DESIGNED for the racing engine.

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

Yawn, notice the topic "RACING ENGINE DESIGN" twisted forgings and induction hardeneing are methods to make economical parts, not racing parts.

Yawn.

Please point me to the thousands of hours of actual dyno cell testing of your designs. I think GM can back up what they say with a 100,000 mile warranty. Not all races end in 5 seconds.

That Chevy crank wouldn't finish a race if it had racing proportioned journal diameters.
Probably would't even survive a NASCAR race with the dimensions it has stock.

Show me ANY Top Fuel, Funny car, Pro Stock and NASCAR, F1 team that uses a twisted forging or induction hardening.

Even the low budget 4340 cranks from Lunati and Jegs etc are nontwisted and not induction hardened.

[Kevin Johnson]

Hey, why don't you ask Alfing who produce crankshafts for NASCAR and F1 and who specialize in induction hardening. That will cut through the bullshit, right?

http://www.alfing-crankshafts.com/

They have been around for 100 years plus.

Yawn, notice the topic "RACING ENGINE DESIGN" twisted forgings and induction hardeneing are methods to make economical parts, not racing parts.

Yawn.

Please point me to the thousands of hours of actual dyno cell testing of your designs. I think GM can back up what they say with a 100,000 mile warranty. Not all races end in 5 seconds.

That Chevy crank wouldn't finish a race if it had racing proportioned journal diameters.
Probably would't even survive a NASCAR race with the dimensions it has stock.

Show me ANY Top Fuel, Funny car, Pro Stock and NASCAR, F1 team that uses a twisted forging or induction hardening.

Even the low budget 4340 cranks from Lunati and Jegs etc are nontwisted and not induction hardened.

[MrBo]

Yawn, notice the topic "RACING ENGINE DESIGN" twisted forgings and induction hardeneing are methods to make economical parts, not racing parts.

Hey Schmidt: Make up your mind. Is the thread about Taylor on “Racing Engine Design” or
“Racing Engine CRANKSHAFT Design” ???????