Why were Ww2 countries unable to create more powerful engines? What were the limitations?
Why were Ww2 countries unable to create more powerful engines? What were the limitations?
Why were Ww2 countries unable to create more powerful engines? What were the limitations?
Basically the main limitation was aspiration, you can't get more power out of an engine without forcing air into it.
One drawback is superchargers/turbochargers at the time were expensive as fuck and needed more maintenance. So yeah great your tanks move faster now, but they break down a lot more. Not good.
Engines in the '70s weren't that much better (basically everything prior to computer-assisted metallurgy was crap), but the powerpack concept helped work around the issue (at the cost of a lengthened logistical tail due to all the required spares).
Engines of the 70's kicked the absolute shit out of 40's engines lmao.
You could pump em with way more air and injection became way more commonplace.
Multiple factors
They didn't have direct injection, only port injection, carbureted at that, compression ratios were lower because they had lower octane fuel, they had no variable valve timing or lift, geometry for optimal airflow and combustion weren't nearly as close to being solved as they are today, cooling and lubrication weren't on the same level as today etc
Also what mentioned. Forced induction was still new at the time and quite expensive. Supercharged cars were a rich man's luxury
>they had lower octane fuel
Ok, correction, by WW2 leaded gasoline was already common but I only really see it mentioned in the context of aviation engines so I don't know if it was used in cars or tanks
Low quality materials, lack of technology in terms of production quality, and no CFD to minmax everything.
What the fuck is wrong with you guys? Is this a bizarro PrepHole thread where you try to write as much counterfactual bullcrap about WW2 engines as possible?
>they had lower octane fuel
>Fighter planes like the Spitfire, Mustang, Thunderbolt, Hurricane, SeaFury, Lightening, Hellcat, and Corsair all ran on 100 octane gas. This allowed the engines that powered them to attain stunning performance. The famous Rolls Merlin began the war producing just over 1,000 horsepower. By the war’s end, it was producing 1,600 horsepower.
https://sofrep.com/news/filler-up-how-high-octane-gasoline-saved-untold-allied-pilots-during-wwii/
Are we talking about the same World War 2?
The World War 2 where Ford brought the GAA engine? An all-aluminum double overhead camshaft tank engine with 500 hp and 1,000 pound-feet out of 1,100 cu in?
The World War 2 where Maybach brought a V12 SOHV with 1364.5 ft lbs and 700 hp out of 1,409.3 cu in?
If you take a good look at engines of the 1930s the ones of WW2 were nothing short of a quantum leap forward. For their time they had tremendous power.
Basically EVERY flight engine was supercharded from the very beginning. And for the tanks: Aside from the Tiger II which was ridiculously heavy there was not a single tank that could be considered underpowered.
The bullcrap you guys are spewing here is on the same level as asking why WW2 fighters had such bad radars compared with 1970s fighters.
WW2 tanks and shit was using 87 octane (if they were lucky)
They weren't running off state of the art aviation gasoline you tool.
>They weren't running off state of the art aviation gasoline you tool.
Yet they were able to have high octane gasoline unlike some of you dumb shits claimes while the tank engines with lower octane had just enough power you tard.
They were 'able' to have high octane fuel by beefing it with additional chemicals like lead and other crazy shit.
You can run a car off of nitro methane, doesn't make it a regular or reasonable fuel for the time.
WW2 tanks were nowhere near as mobile as they could have been, they had to be run pretty hard to get to their max speeds. This causes breakdowns.
No fucking way you could use 150 octane aviation gas in a WW2 tank either, the engine didn't even have the intake to use that power.
>lower octane fuel
Yeah, for some reason I though TEL came about after the war
As for the other things, I'm pretty sure OP meant "compared to today", where we can squeeze out the same or even greater power from a fraction of the displacement
>'m pretty sure OP meant "compared to today", where we can squeeze out the same or even greater power from a fraction of the displacement
Yeah that's because we had about 70 fucking years of development. As I said here:
>the same level as asking why WW2 fighters had such bad radars compared with 1970s fighters
By the Start of WW2 the mass-produced engine had only been a thing for a mere ~25 years. Before the T-model Ford engines had been a novelty. It wasn't until the early 1910s when they really kicked off.
Then you have to keep one thing in mind: Since it was a comparatively new technology the main goals of development back then were reliable engines. The other development goals are
power-to-weight ratio,
power-to-displacement ratio,
fuel consumption and
responsiveness.
When we take a good look at WW2 engines this goal was achieved. These engines were the first ones that really could reach several 10k miles without bigger problems or too many adjustments needed.
But since there were other goals to develop (again: keep in mind engine technology was kinda young) these engines couldn't be as powerful or responsive as later engines.
That being said: Even if we only look at engines for land vehicles they had at least okay-ish power. Once again I refer to the Ford GAA and the Willys L134, the Go-Devil-Engine.
Sure: The IC-engine hat lots of room for further development. But it was FAR(!!!) from being underpowered or shitty or whatever names you want to call it. WW2 engines were developments of their time and wartime really boosted their development.
Oh and I forgot one thing: Turbocharged engines were notorious for having a "turbo lag" since it took some time for the turbine wheel to spin fast enough. This hasn't been solved since the late 1990s when variable nozzle turbochargers became a thing.
So back in WW2 they DID have turbochargers. They even had multi stage turbos as shown in most airplanes of the time.
But since turbo lag was such a big thing and turbos were not as reliable yet nobody dared to use them for military land vehicles that needed to be able to run thousands of miles without major overhauls.
Keep in mind that planes usually got lots of maintenance after each flight whereas a tank or jeep or truck just got a coolant and oil check and perhaps valve adjustment.
Planes didn't have multistage turbos. Any turbocharger was rare in aircraft engines in the 1940s, especially outside of American planes, and by the late '40s the turbocharger was outdated and had been replaced by the more efficient power recovery turbine.
Multistage superchargers would become standard as WWII progressed but were not commonplace before the war. The British development of a coaxial two-stage supercharger was a major factor in making multistage blowers standard, otherwise you had larger and more complex arrangements like those used in the USN fighters from the F4F onward.
Turbocharged aircraft would also have a mechanical supercharger since that's just how the engines were built, but since the turbo did most of the compression, the mechanical blowers ran at very low ratios to maintain power and didn't contribute very much boost.
AFAIK the B-29 was the only WWII plane to use multiple turbos per engine, and these ran in parallel, not in sequential stages.
It seems pretty obvious that OP was asking about the differences between WW2-era and modern engines, not whether they were good for their time
What you're saying is true but not necessarily relevant to the thread
Also this thread should probably moved to >>>PrepHole
>What you're saying is true but not necessarily relevant to the thread
It is relevant because it answers OPs question of the limitations back then.
Then again: We're talking about hardcore mechanical engineering and I doubt OP is able to understand such a thing if he asks such a question at all.
>Hurr why didn't they just use VTEC mayne?!
>Why were Ww2 countries unable to create more powerful engines?
>Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp
>Not powerful enough for its time
>Packard V-1650 Merlin
>Not powerful enough for its time
>Ford GAA
>Not powerful enough for its time
>Daimler-Benz DB 605
>Not powerful enough for its time
>Junkers Jumo 213
>Not powerful enough for its time
The only country whose metallurgy sucked back then was japan. That was one of the reasons why they failed to field powerful, reliable liquid cooled engines and stuck with mediocre radial ones
retarded slide thread
>Why were Ww2 countries unable to create more powerful engines?
It took the better part of the 20th century and billions of man-hours raw brainpower to reach the goal of 100hp per liter displacement in both charged and naturally aspired engines.
It was unironically easier to put a man on the moon and bring him back than developing internal combistion engines with powers like we've seen them since the 00s.
So why? Because they didn't have enough time for so much development. This is not even so much about metallurgy. It's more about stuff like the shape of combustion chambers, homogenous mixture control, valve shape and placement and a myriad of other seemingly small things.