The Most Powerful Diesel Engine in the World!

Large steam turbine-driven ships have an "astern" turbine just for that purpose. The regular turbine can't be reversed and it is to costly to design gearing for it.

Bob Swinney

Hydraulic?

I worked on engine room controls back in the 70's. I recall that they had:

turbine---gearbox----propshaft

With no clutches other than to disengage the turning gear. The turbine case had 2 sets of steam inlets, one connected to the forward throttle and the other connected to the reverse throttle.

The ships that I spent the most time on were from the APL line.

Would they use some turbine engines or a few electric motors to fire this baby up?. It's gotta move thru a few cumbustion cycles to get going.

Which brings to my mind another question - being diesel and with a 3' bore and 8' stroke the compressions pressures have got to be large - so the injection pump would have to put out some high pressure to be able to spray into the combustion chamber. The injection pump(s) for this thing have gotta be pretty impressive also. Ken.

Pony engine? Any guess on how big it is?

Cube square relation. The larger the engine, the more volume it has with respect to surface area. Heat losses are through the surface area. So the larger the engine, the smaller the percentage of total heat is lost through the engine surfaces. Thus more heat is retained in the combustion gases, where it can do useful work expanding against the piston. So it can be more efficient.

Gary

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Yep, that's what we had on the Arkansas (CGN-41).

Brad

True, but I DID say LARGE Diesel engines. Meaning marine and stationary power, not vehicles. The largest land 'mobile' diesels, even RR diesels, are tiny in comparison.

Dan Mitchell ===========

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As others have already stated, most really large Diesels are started from a reservoir of compressed air. The engine's valves can be retimed to allow this. The engine is run up to some low speed like a steam engine, then the valves are reconfigured, and the oil injection started.

Smaller Diesels are usually started electrically. Some have starter motors. Many are used to run big generators, which sometimes can be configured as motors to start their Diesel.

Dan Mitchell ==========

Dan Mitchell ==========

Roy wrote:

Unlikely that any of the main parts is a solid casting, they were fabricating large diesels as far back as the '30s from flame-cut steel sheet weldments. I've got a book on high-speed diesels from that era, there's a picture of a guy standing in the engine block and stick welding the crankshaft bearing supports. After all the welding was done, the whole works went into an oven for stress relief and finish machining was completed afterwards on the bearing and cylinder liner areas.

Stan

I'd say the high efficiency is due to

1) The high compression ratio, and 2) The surface to volume ratio, which goes down as size goes up, reducing losses through conduction.

I'll bet a big one like that could run on straight crude. I wonder what a tanker engine uses?

I like the way cooling oil is pumped into the straight part of the connecting rod, then sprayed in a flood into the piston crown to keep it from melting.

With the intake valve locked out, it'd be dark inside the cylinder, but it's be a hell of a fun ride. What was the rpm, twenty?

Personally I'd settle for walking into the block while it was OFF.

Smoochie and I are planning a cruise. Maybe this would be a fun stop while we're on ship.

Yes, combustion can be nearly complete in a volume that size, at those speeds, with very little fuel wasted. The requirements for stoichiometry must be very precise to avoid wasting several gallons of fuel on each stroke from those little swirly things that tend to form near the corners.

Do they wait for compression, then inject the fuel in a spray? Even better. One of the latest Direct Injection 50 cc scooters does that, and it's nearly smokeless. It's scavenged with air, and the injection is a mixture of high pressure air and gasoline, without an oil mix. The only thing going through the flap valve is air with the synthetic lube oil atomized into it. These top out at about 85 kph, IIRC, and can run all day on a couple gallons, if your ass can take it.

What was it, Previa? No, um....

Yours,

Doug Goncz (at aol dot com) Replikon Research

Read the RIAA Clean Slate Program Affidavit and Description at

will be signing an amended Affidavit soon.

Very close. Most of those big diesels run on "Bunker C" So thick you have to heat it to get it to flow.

The book "Diesel's Engines, From Conception to 1918-" by Lyle Cummins is an excellent book and well worth the read. I got mine from Linsay's. It describes all of the trials and tribulations of Rudolf Diesel,especially for the big engines. His engines used crossheads just like the one in the link.

All diesels work that way. There is no other way to control ignition timing. The high compression heats the air charge to a temperature that will ignite the fuel as it is injected, so that injection timing controls ignition timing, and the length of the injection time, and therefore the volume of fuel injected, controls the power produced. There is no throttle butterfly to control incoming air. Full air charge is needed to generate the high pressure and temperature.

Dan

So deisels don't know the meaning of the word mixture?

Tim

-- In the immortal words of Ned Flanders: "No foot longs!" Website @

It is two-stroke but it is a valve uniflow engine and has a single exhaust valve per cylinder.

See:

for an animated cutaway I made several years ago.

Rick C/E Steam and motor

Basically, though full lean mix is idle and full rich is full power.

Dan