Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Bristol Centaurus
Summary
The Centaurus was the final development of the Bristol Engine Company's series of sleeve valve radial aircraft engines. The Centaurus is an 18-cylinder, two-row design that eventually delivered over . The engine was introduced into service late in the Second World War and was one of the most powerful aircraft piston engines to see service.
Like other Bristol sleeve valve engines, the Centaurus was based on the design knowledge acquired from an earlier design, in this case the Bristol Perseus cylinder. The Centaurus used 18 Perseus cylinders. The same cylinder was in use in the contemporary 14-cylinder Hercules, which was being brought into production when the design of the Centaurus started.
The Centaurus had a cylinder swept volume of , nearly as much as the American Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone large radial, making the Centaurus one of the largest aircraft piston engines to enter production, while that of the Hercules was . The nearly 40 per cent higher capacity was achieved by increasing the stroke from and by changing to two rows of nine cylinders instead of two rows of seven. The diameter of the Centaurus was only just over 6 per cent greater than the Hercules in spite of its much greater swept volume.
The cylinder heads had an indentation like an inverted top hat, which was finned, but it was difficult to get air down into this hollow to adequately cool the head. During development, Bristol contacted ICI Metals Division, Birmingham, to enquire whether a copper-chromium alloy with higher thermal conductivity would have sufficient high temperature strength to be used for this purpose. With the same cylinder volume and using the new material, the horsepower per cylinder was raised from to .
Bristol maintained the Centaurus from type-testing in 1938, but production did not start until 1942, owing to the need to get the Hercules into production and improve the reliability of the entire engine line. Nor was there any real need for the larger engine at this early point in the war, when most military aircraft designs had a requirement for engines of about .
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.