L
lohring
Guest
That's why I'm afraid you would need a ceramic piston and liner, much harder items to fabricate. Then you would need to deal with the fuel issue, but that is easier and has been investigated. One of the easiest ways to increase the thermal efficiency of an engine is to increase the temperature. Our tiny engines suffer from more heat loss than larger engines because they have a lot of cylinder area for their cylinder volume. Ceramics are the most promising materials for increasing the temperatures. It's just that all our backgrounds are in designing and fabricating metals. So far, no big ceramic piston or turbine engines are being built. I'm sure experimentation is going on and little engines shouldn't have some of the structural problems of big engines. I'm stuck in several conventional gasoline engine projecst or I would consider some experiments.The problem with ceramic heads, and some of the other poor heat conduction materials, they would allow run-a-way heat build up in the combustion chamber. The idea is to raise the combustion temperture some to allow for the more effecient burning of the fuel/air mixture while still being able to control the upper temp limit. Too much combustion chamber temp would make the engine go into damaging preignition and detonation. This would raise the temps even more and reduce the RPM's just before the engine lets go. If all you wanted was more head temp, do away with the water cooling and fins. Charles
Lohring Miller