I've been looking at a lot of "new engine" ideas over the years, and I've come up with a short list of items to check for to evaluate their feasibility. Most I've seen fail due to one of these.
1) Seal exposure. How is the combustion chamber sealed? What is the length of the seal, and how stiff is it? This looks like it has a long, winding seal on a plate. A lot of pressure will leak down from the chamber in the milliseconds after the ignition pressure builds just from having so many escape routes. And if that plate flexes (a few thousandths of an inch is a chasm), anything resembling efficiency disappears. Every bend in the seal area means a seal joint, and lost efficiency. One of the big losses for the Wankel engine is the large seal areas on both sides of the rotor. The tip seal meet the corner seals which meet the side seal, and each joint leaks like a sieve. Fortunately, the rotor is a chunk of cast iron, and the sides and housings can be made really beefy, since they are stationary. The piston engine, otoh, has a round piston, with seal that are hidden inside a crack from the combustion gases point of view. The piston engine probably has the smallest possible seal length to combustion chamber volume that can be achieved. What's more, the seals can overlapped themselves, decreasing the effect of the joint the seal makes with itself.
2) Wetted area inside the combustion chamber. The more metal exposed to combustion gases, the more heat is going to be sucked out the combustion event. The Wankel loses out to the piston engine on that front to. The cylinder maximizes the volume to surface area ratio. Anything else can expect to take an efficiency hit from there.
3) Corners. Sharp corners are the enemy. As the sides meet, the exposure to so much metal will extinquish the flame front. The Wankel exhaust is so hot and loud because as the tip seal moves past the exhaust, unburnt FA mixture from both sides of the seal are suddenly dumped into the hot burnt gases and explodes. It an awfully tiny explosion, but it happens right in the entrance to the exhaust. This tiny explosion uses fuel, but does nothing to push the rotor. Bad news for efficiency. It can be alleviated somewhat with direct injection.
From my layman's POV, those are the three things that hold back most new engine designs.
OK, so explain to me how you will get past the laws of physics then?
You don't "get around" the laws of physics, you work with them.
First off, you don't depend on chemical rockets. You have a celestial based laser propulsion system so you don't have to carry all your fuel outbound. You go nuclear for the return trip.
Sit down sometime and read a pre-1900 machinist's manual. You would say that it was impossible to do some of the things people used to take for granted. After a while, you stop saying things like "can't be done".
An engineer is a person who is trained to get the desired result with the least input. QA engineers are attempting to construct tests that will insure the highest quality product with the least amount of testing. Aeronautical engineers are attempting to build the lightest/fastest/safest airplane for the least size/weight/cost. Automotive engineers are attempting to build the lightest/fastest/safest car for the least size/weight/cost. Civil engineers are attempting to build the most durable/safest bridge or highway for the least cost/environmental disruption.
Sometimes, the engineer has to optimize more than one variable.
Stupid guidance counselor. Learning to weld **gave me the opportunity** to learn more about true engineering, creating a structure that will stay together under expected conditions, than anything else I've ever done. In all of education, there is NOTHING in a classroom that can compare to seeing your creation come apart, inspecting it, and knowing what you should have done to make it stay together. That counselor should be fired immediately for having her head so far up her ass that she can't realize that there is a LOT of world outside of a classroom.
If you can telecommute full time and do your job from the comfort of home, then you're ALREADY competing with folks who would be happy to have your job at 10% of what you're paid.
My commute is 25min each way...IFF the traffic is good. Let's say it averages out to an hour a day. Given vacations, the average worker is going to commute somewhere around 200 days a year. Taking the average salary given in the article, the $7,900 dollars lost will be like paying me $39.50 an hour of tax free dollars. It's even better if you figure in the cost of fuel, maintenance and eating expenses.
I pay $5 for a ham'n'cheese sandwich in the company cafeteria. It would probably be more like $3 if I took the stuff from my fridge.
You should have never answered the door. She would have gotten tired, eventually. Yes, parents need to have more resiliency than their 5 yr olds. Electrifying the door would have also worked. Spanking the wife would be another option.
I've had the same experience with several "old friends". I hid them from my pages. I also found a few friends that I fondly remember and we'd have beers every Friday they didn't live in another state/continent.
It ain't all roses, but it ain't all manure, either.
The closest fad I think it matches up with is CB radio. Many here may not be old enough to remember that craze. My first truck had to have one.
After a few years, you finally figured out that most people didn't have squat to say. It became a technical exercise to see how far you could get a 4 watt signal to reach. After a while of reaching, and finding what you reached to be totally useless, you lost interest and moved on.
I expect FB to stick around a little longer, because:
1) You can add pictures, videos and links to things that are actually interesting. 2) There isn't the immediacy requirements of CB. Once you spoke on CB, the message was gone. On FB, the message sticks to your wall....forever. 3) There isn't the territorialy requirements of CB. You only had 4watts of reach with the CB. FB can reach around the world and back.
The ultimate gotcha, though, is you still depends on people keeping it interesting...and people are boring.
What you've basically done is prove that they are clueless dumbasses. Not that the point wasn't evident before. But now you have firm evidence of the situation that they can't dance around. The best thing you can do in that situation is to find a way to the give the most honest among them credit for it, and then let him drag you to the point of prominence you deserve.
Your goal is not the same as your managers. You want to make a better product that increases the companies value. They want to build an empire to MANAGE.
I, along with two others, automated a complex system test to the point where you submitted an image, and came back later to collect your results. We built a web interface that allowed you to track the tests, and all sort of ancillary links to useful information. We did it all in less than 6 months while keeping up with an aggressive testing schedule to meet a tight release deadline.
A second-line manager, who was over our team before we all complained about him to the point that upper-management conducted a reorg, obviously wants credit for it. He has put together a "team", with the stated goal of building EXACTLY what we have. WE'RE EVEN ON THE TEAM!! We've been having weekly meetings for 10 months now. We've convinced exactly ONE of the engineers from another team to configure a testbed like our, and start using our scripts.
Meanwhile, we just keep chugging along, improving our process in parallel. Management can take a simple task, and choke the life out of it with "process". The major driver is that they are in charge, have no clue what they're doing, but they have to make it LOOK like they did something spectacular. That means multi-colored charts and graphs, not constant, efficient testing that improves developer productivity and a stable release. You've GOT to have an attractive, mult-color dashboard...quality be damned.
I'd like to see how they do the force direction conversion. It's making my head hurt trying to envision how it could be done, but I've seen enough cool tricks to know that it just might be possible.
As for the de-icing using the shape of the airfoil...good luck with that one. Aviation engineers have been hunting for that grail since about the time commercial aviation first started.
It don't matter how efficient the train is if people find it so damn inconvenient that they refuse to ride it. People in big cities like to toute how efficient their trains are, because the area they live in is so congested that the cars are inconvenient. Everything they need is within a short walking distance, and moving a car through a congested city is a PITA. I know when I get a speeding ticket, I don't think "Oh crap, I gotta pay $120". I think, "Oh crap, I gotta drive downtown to deal with this crap."
People in big cities also have the convenience of the trains running around the clock. If I decided to take the bus, I have to plan my life out for a stop every two hours, at least a mile walk on each end, and the last bus leaves work at 5:30. Sorry, but I'd rather drive.
Get out of the city center and your vehicle becomes an extension of you. Everything interesting you will want to do involves your car, and you become unaccustomed to the smell of the pissed stained homeless drunk in the next seat. People (at least in the US) like their freedom to move at will, and won't give it up easily.
The car ferry is a compromise on what we have to work with. People are allowed to stay mobile, but at the same time move to a more efficient mode of transportation than what we have now.
What the heck is the point of insurance if there's a cap?
So that someone would actually sell you a policy?
I'm pretty sure my insurance in the UK wasn't capped. In any case, I ended up using several multiples of what I'd paid in premium.
First, why do you have a health insurance policy in a country with socialized medicine?
Second, the insurers can't stay in business if everyone ends up using several multiples of what they pay. It's impossible to "make it up on volume" that way, and who wants to start a business that is guaranteed to lose money.
If I go into your customer's place of business and make a convincing case that their factory will burn unless they buy exclusively from me instead of you, then I've committed a crime.
If I go into your customer's place of business and make a convincing case that their trucks will all stop running from sugar in their gas tanks unless they buy exclusively from me instead of you, then I've committed a crime.
Likewise, if I go into your customer's place of business and make a convincing case that they will not be able to sell into market unless they buy exclusively from me, then I've committed a crime.
Microsoft held a monopoly on the OS market for business PCs. There were better OS products on the market, but MS manipulated its inferior product so that other programs depended on its idiosyncracies. MS manipulated the market so that a customer could not select the OS from the computer manufacturer based on price and features. Microsoft committed a crime.
Now the company entrenched as the market leader for operating systems for computers is claiming the same of tablets (of which they have nearly no offerings).
...in the same way the company declared that the Internet was a fad (until they did a 180 and claimed it was their idea).
Kodak, Microsoft, IBM, Motorola and about 25 more companies claim they have already patented it. When pressed they admitted they have pretty much patented everything that could ever be done on a computer.
That may be true, but did they patent ", while on the internet"....'cause that's different you see...
I've never seen a policy that did not specify a yearly limit. Of course, the liberals in the group will call that "denying benefits", and the "cold-hearted insurance company letting someone die."
Slashdot Mirror
Son, all that kool-aid you've been drinking is going to rot your teeth.
Follow the links in my sig. It's even in video form, so you don't have to tax yourself with reading.
I've been looking at a lot of "new engine" ideas over the years, and I've come up with a short list of items to check for to evaluate their feasibility. Most I've seen fail due to one of these.
1) Seal exposure. How is the combustion chamber sealed? What is the length of the seal, and how stiff is it? This looks like it has a long, winding seal on a plate. A lot of pressure will leak down from the chamber in the milliseconds after the ignition pressure builds just from having so many escape routes. And if that plate flexes (a few thousandths of an inch is a chasm), anything resembling efficiency disappears. Every bend in the seal area means a seal joint, and lost efficiency. One of the big losses for the Wankel engine is the large seal areas on both sides of the rotor. The tip seal meet the corner seals which meet the side seal, and each joint leaks like a sieve. Fortunately, the rotor is a chunk of cast iron, and the sides and housings can be made really beefy, since they are stationary. The piston engine, otoh, has a round piston, with seal that are hidden inside a crack from the combustion gases point of view. The piston engine probably has the smallest possible seal length to combustion chamber volume that can be achieved. What's more, the seals can overlapped themselves, decreasing the effect of the joint the seal makes with itself.
2) Wetted area inside the combustion chamber. The more metal exposed to combustion gases, the more heat is going to be sucked out the combustion event. The Wankel loses out to the piston engine on that front to. The cylinder maximizes the volume to surface area ratio. Anything else can expect to take an efficiency hit from there.
3) Corners. Sharp corners are the enemy. As the sides meet, the exposure to so much metal will extinquish the flame front. The Wankel exhaust is so hot and loud because as the tip seal moves past the exhaust, unburnt FA mixture from both sides of the seal are suddenly dumped into the hot burnt gases and explodes. It an awfully tiny explosion, but it happens right in the entrance to the exhaust. This tiny explosion uses fuel, but does nothing to push the rotor. Bad news for efficiency. It can be alleviated somewhat with direct injection.
From my layman's POV, those are the three things that hold back most new engine designs.
I could be wrong.
OK, so explain to me how you will get past the laws of physics then?
You don't "get around" the laws of physics, you work with them.
First off, you don't depend on chemical rockets. You have a celestial based laser propulsion system so you don't have to carry all your fuel outbound. You go nuclear for the return trip.
Sit down sometime and read a pre-1900 machinist's manual. You would say that it was impossible to do some of the things people used to take for granted. After a while, you stop saying things like "can't be done".
An engineer is a person who is trained to get the desired result with the least input.
QA engineers are attempting to construct tests that will insure the highest quality product with the least amount of testing.
Aeronautical engineers are attempting to build the lightest/fastest/safest airplane for the least size/weight/cost.
Automotive engineers are attempting to build the lightest/fastest/safest car for the least size/weight/cost.
Civil engineers are attempting to build the most durable/safest bridge or highway for the least cost/environmental disruption.
Sometimes, the engineer has to optimize more than one variable.
No one is stopping you from clicking. They're just not obligated to take you anywhere.
Stupid guidance counselor. Learning to weld **gave me the opportunity** to learn more about true engineering, creating a structure that will stay together under expected conditions, than anything else I've ever done. In all of education, there is NOTHING in a classroom that can compare to seeing your creation come apart, inspecting it, and knowing what you should have done to make it stay together. That counselor should be fired immediately for having her head so far up her ass that she can't realize that there is a LOT of world outside of a classroom.
If you can telecommute full time and do your job from the comfort of home, then you're ALREADY competing with folks who would be happy to have your job at 10% of what you're paid.
My commute is 25min each way...IFF the traffic is good. Let's say it averages out to an hour a day. Given vacations, the average worker is going to commute somewhere around 200 days a year. Taking the average salary given in the article, the $7,900 dollars lost will be like paying me $39.50 an hour of tax free dollars. It's even better if you figure in the cost of fuel, maintenance and eating expenses.
I pay $5 for a ham'n'cheese sandwich in the company cafeteria. It would probably be more like $3 if I took the stuff from my fridge.
You should have never answered the door. She would have gotten tired, eventually. Yes, parents need to have more resiliency than their 5 yr olds. Electrifying the door would have also worked. Spanking the wife would be another option.
I've had the same experience with several "old friends". I hid them from my pages. I also found a few friends that I fondly remember and we'd have beers every Friday they didn't live in another state/continent.
It ain't all roses, but it ain't all manure, either.
The closest fad I think it matches up with is CB radio. Many here may not be old enough to remember that craze. My first truck had to have one.
After a few years, you finally figured out that most people didn't have squat to say. It became a technical exercise to see how far you could get a 4 watt signal to reach. After a while of reaching, and finding what you reached to be totally useless, you lost interest and moved on.
I expect FB to stick around a little longer, because:
1) You can add pictures, videos and links to things that are actually interesting.
2) There isn't the immediacy requirements of CB. Once you spoke on CB, the message was gone. On FB, the message sticks to your wall....forever.
3) There isn't the territorialy requirements of CB. You only had 4watts of reach with the CB. FB can reach around the world and back.
The ultimate gotcha, though, is you still depends on people keeping it interesting...and people are boring.
And what happens to the people that aren't obsessed with socializing?
The read /.?
Careful.
What you've basically done is prove that they are clueless dumbasses. Not that the point wasn't evident before. But now you have firm evidence of the situation that they can't dance around. The best thing you can do in that situation is to find a way to the give the most honest among them credit for it, and then let him drag you to the point of prominence you deserve.
Your goal is not the same as your managers. You want to make a better product that increases the companies value. They want to build an empire to MANAGE.
I'm actually involved in proving this right now.
I, along with two others, automated a complex system test to the point where you submitted an image, and came back later to collect your results. We built a web interface that allowed you to track the tests, and all sort of ancillary links to useful information. We did it all in less than 6 months while keeping up with an aggressive testing schedule to meet a tight release deadline.
A second-line manager, who was over our team before we all complained about him to the point that upper-management conducted a reorg, obviously wants credit for it. He has put together a "team", with the stated goal of building EXACTLY what we have. WE'RE EVEN ON THE TEAM!! We've been having weekly meetings for 10 months now. We've convinced exactly ONE of the engineers from another team to configure a testbed like our, and start using our scripts.
Meanwhile, we just keep chugging along, improving our process in parallel. Management can take a simple task, and choke the life out of it with "process". The major driver is that they are in charge, have no clue what they're doing, but they have to make it LOOK like they did something spectacular. That means multi-colored charts and graphs, not constant, efficient testing that improves developer productivity and a stable release. You've GOT to have an attractive, mult-color dashboard...quality be damned.
Fox News bashing. We haven't seen that on Slashdot before, now have we? How quaint.
It could be that the /. editors have misunderstood and they think the purpose is to be a fool...something they try to excel at every year.
I'd like to see how they do the force direction conversion. It's making my head hurt trying to envision how it could be done, but I've seen enough cool tricks to know that it just might be possible.
As for the de-icing using the shape of the airfoil...good luck with that one. Aviation engineers have been hunting for that grail since about the time commercial aviation first started.
I guess that's why standardized test scores have been skyrocketing in the US since we created a Department of Education.
I agree, drinkypoo. 100% and without reservation.
However...
It don't matter how efficient the train is if people find it so damn inconvenient that they refuse to ride it. People in big cities like to toute how efficient their trains are, because the area they live in is so congested that the cars are inconvenient. Everything they need is within a short walking distance, and moving a car through a congested city is a PITA. I know when I get a speeding ticket, I don't think "Oh crap, I gotta pay $120". I think, "Oh crap, I gotta drive downtown to deal with this crap."
People in big cities also have the convenience of the trains running around the clock. If I decided to take the bus, I have to plan my life out for a stop every two hours, at least a mile walk on each end, and the last bus leaves work at 5:30. Sorry, but I'd rather drive.
Get out of the city center and your vehicle becomes an extension of you. Everything interesting you will want to do involves your car, and you become unaccustomed to the smell of the pissed stained homeless drunk in the next seat. People (at least in the US) like their freedom to move at will, and won't give it up easily.
The car ferry is a compromise on what we have to work with. People are allowed to stay mobile, but at the same time move to a more efficient mode of transportation than what we have now.
Is this the US you're talking about?
Yes.
What the heck is the point of insurance if there's a cap?
So that someone would actually sell you a policy?
I'm pretty sure my insurance in the UK wasn't capped. In any case, I ended up using several multiples of what I'd paid in premium.
First, why do you have a health insurance policy in a country with socialized medicine?
Second, the insurers can't stay in business if everyone ends up using several multiples of what they pay. It's impossible to "make it up on volume" that way, and who wants to start a business that is guaranteed to lose money.
The ability to operate a business from DRDOS.
If I go into your customer's place of business and make a convincing case that their factory will burn unless they buy exclusively from me instead of you, then I've committed a crime.
If I go into your customer's place of business and make a convincing case that their trucks will all stop running from sugar in their gas tanks unless they buy exclusively from me instead of you, then I've committed a crime.
Likewise, if I go into your customer's place of business and make a convincing case that they will not be able to sell into market unless they buy exclusively from me, then I've committed a crime.
Microsoft held a monopoly on the OS market for business PCs. There were better OS products on the market, but MS manipulated its inferior product so that other programs depended on its idiosyncracies. MS manipulated the market so that a customer could not select the OS from the computer manufacturer based on price and features. Microsoft committed a crime.
Now the company entrenched as the market leader for operating systems for computers is claiming the same of tablets (of which they have nearly no offerings).
...in the same way the company declared that the Internet was a fad (until they did a 180 and claimed it was their idea).
Kodak, Microsoft, IBM, Motorola and about 25 more companies claim they have already patented it. When pressed they admitted they have pretty much patented everything that could ever be done on a computer.
That may be true, but did they patent ", while on the internet"....'cause that's different you see...
I've never seen a policy that did not specify a yearly limit. Of course, the liberals in the group will call that "denying benefits", and the "cold-hearted insurance company letting someone die."
What defense lawyer? No one has been charged, accused or subpoena-ed yet?