Where to learn more about diesel engines ?

[RichBennett]

Are there any web-site's or books that describe the fundamentals of how diesel engines (in general) work ? i. e. - combustion basics, fuel delivery, parts description etc.



Thanx

 

[illflem]

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=diesel+engine+basics

 

[rbattelle]

I strongly recommend the 2-volume series by Charles Fayette Taylor: "The Interal Combustion Engine in Theory and Practice". Available at Amazon, but they're a little pricey. Outstanding reciprocating engine physics. They were written back in the 60s, so there's no modern electronics info, though. But we all know physics never changes.



His bibliography is very extensive, and leads to many landmark papers published on all sorts of topics. I particularly value the NACA reports for combustion dynamics... and they're available for free!

 

[atv98ah]

reference

you might check out http://www.howstuffworks.com.



Just type in "diesel" in the search area.

 

[rbattelle]

Here's the link to the NACA technical reports server. These are great, but can be overwhelming if you're not an engineer or otherwise very knowledgeable about Diesels.



http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/



And here's a few that I really like:



http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1939/naca-tn-710/



http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1932/naca-tn-434/



http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/reports/1936/naca-report-512/



I could go on and on, but if you just search for "Diesel" you'll get lots of great stuff.

 

[RichBennett]

at http://auto.howstuffworks.com/diesel1.htm there is an animation of a combustion process of a diesel. It show intake air coming in through the intake valve and also compressed air coming in near the injector. Could someone explain to me where the compressed air comes from and why its needed ?!

 

[rbattelle]

They may be trying to indicate how the injector is opened in some applications? Otherwise I am unclear why there is a compressed air source for the injector.

 

[KBennett]

I am not a diesel mechanic but I think the injector system in the example is a different design than what our Cummins engines use. The example looks like it uses compressed air to pressurize the fuel to inject it into the motor. In our Cummins the fuel is pressurized by a high pressure pump and then injected into the motor without the need for compressed air.