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Considering the material Schmidtbauer and Anders were studying, most of
that research was probably based on liquidcooled systems (how much streamline
optimizing can you do on a aircooled cylinder head compared to optimizing duct
work and even radiators...). They just applied to their Lycomings as best as
they could.
If you look at the WW II powerhouses like
Mustang/Thunderbolt/Spitfire/Me109/FW190/etc.
you will always see more sofisticated ducting on the liquid cooled
ones than on the aircooled ones (these basically having only the oil coolers to
be placed in a location of choice to acomodate perfect
ducting...)
With the rotary we are obviously dealing with a lot of ductwork -
radiator inlet/exit - oilcooler inlet/exit - combustion air intake/cooling air
exit augmentation - , so optimizing it will be a drag reduction priority,
.....for me. I also will closely look into fishmouth exhaust ends and possibly
try to connect this system with exhaust augmentation for the cooling exit
ducts.
Thomas J.
This is completely logical if you consider the extremely small
surface area
available to transfer heat on the cylinderhead fins compared
to the surface
area on even a small radiator.
I agree.
To take this even further, an *optimized* water cooled installation will use
fewer CFM to cool a given number of BTUs (and have less drag) than an
aircooled engine. The P-51 would probably not been able to escort
bombers all the way to Germany and back if it had an air cooled engine (all
other factors remaining the same).
Tracy
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