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In case you are not aware, February 23rd marks the anniversary of Rudolf Diesel's patent for a "Arbeitsverfahren und Ausführungsart für Verbrennungskraftmaschinen" (Working process and realization method for combustion engines). The patent was issued on this date in 1893, marking this year the 115th anniversary.
Much of Diesel's original design in the patent can be easily identified and compared to modern engines bearing his name 115 years later. This included high-pressure direct injection of fuel into the combustion chamber and use of a specially-shaped piston bowl.
Diesel's patent was not without disputes of prior art, however. Herbert Akroyd Stuart of the UK had taken out patents as much as two years earlier for "Improvements in Engines Operated by the Explosion of Mixtures of Combustible Vapour or Gas and Air", but Akroyd's design specified an engine that would induct a pre-mixed air- and vapourized-oil mixture into the engine, and combustion initiated by a hot-bulb in the combustion chamber, essentially the same thing as a present-day glow-plug. This can be easily and decisively contrasted to Diesel's proposal for an engine that would induct only air, with fuel injected at the time of combustion, and ignition solely by the heat of the highly-compressed air.
Historians attibute Diesel's early inspiration to Sadi Carnot of France, who in 1824, at the age of only 28, wrote a treatise entitled, "Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu" (Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire). At a time when the knowledge of thermodynamics was still very much incomplete and at its infancy, and the First Law of Thermodynamics still not yet formally formulated, he proposed a thermodynamic working process that would result in the highest attainable thermal efficiency between the highest- and lowest temperatures in the cycle.
Diesel at first tried to make a practical realization of the Carnot engine, although it was only a theoretical possibility. Having failed in this early attempt for heat addition at constant temperature as the Carnot cycle prescribed, Diesel was believed to have been inspired by a demostration device at the Munich Technical University where he studied. In this device, a glass cylindrical tube had a moving piston, and the contents of the chamber could be sealed, resembling a modern-day bicycle tire pump. When a piece of paper was inserted into the cylinder and the piston rapidly pushed inwards, the paper would spontaneously combust from the heat generated from compression of the air trapped in the chamber.
Upon completing his studies at Munich Technical University with the highest grades ever awarded, he worked briefly at the Linde refrigeration company, founded by his professor in Munich, but it wasn't until he later went to the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg (present-day M.A.N.) did the engine that later bore his name come to fruition.
During a trip Diesel took in September 1913 to cross the English Channel from Antwerp, Belgium to Harwich, England, Diesel went missing. Although many theories have been brought forward, the circumstances of his death have never been authoritatively ascertained.
The Diesel Patent Engine is exhibited in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
Thank you, Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel, 1858-1913.
Much of Diesel's original design in the patent can be easily identified and compared to modern engines bearing his name 115 years later. This included high-pressure direct injection of fuel into the combustion chamber and use of a specially-shaped piston bowl.
Diesel's patent was not without disputes of prior art, however. Herbert Akroyd Stuart of the UK had taken out patents as much as two years earlier for "Improvements in Engines Operated by the Explosion of Mixtures of Combustible Vapour or Gas and Air", but Akroyd's design specified an engine that would induct a pre-mixed air- and vapourized-oil mixture into the engine, and combustion initiated by a hot-bulb in the combustion chamber, essentially the same thing as a present-day glow-plug. This can be easily and decisively contrasted to Diesel's proposal for an engine that would induct only air, with fuel injected at the time of combustion, and ignition solely by the heat of the highly-compressed air.
Historians attibute Diesel's early inspiration to Sadi Carnot of France, who in 1824, at the age of only 28, wrote a treatise entitled, "Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu" (Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire). At a time when the knowledge of thermodynamics was still very much incomplete and at its infancy, and the First Law of Thermodynamics still not yet formally formulated, he proposed a thermodynamic working process that would result in the highest attainable thermal efficiency between the highest- and lowest temperatures in the cycle.
Diesel at first tried to make a practical realization of the Carnot engine, although it was only a theoretical possibility. Having failed in this early attempt for heat addition at constant temperature as the Carnot cycle prescribed, Diesel was believed to have been inspired by a demostration device at the Munich Technical University where he studied. In this device, a glass cylindrical tube had a moving piston, and the contents of the chamber could be sealed, resembling a modern-day bicycle tire pump. When a piece of paper was inserted into the cylinder and the piston rapidly pushed inwards, the paper would spontaneously combust from the heat generated from compression of the air trapped in the chamber.
Upon completing his studies at Munich Technical University with the highest grades ever awarded, he worked briefly at the Linde refrigeration company, founded by his professor in Munich, but it wasn't until he later went to the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg (present-day M.A.N.) did the engine that later bore his name come to fruition.
During a trip Diesel took in September 1913 to cross the English Channel from Antwerp, Belgium to Harwich, England, Diesel went missing. Although many theories have been brought forward, the circumstances of his death have never been authoritatively ascertained.
The Diesel Patent Engine is exhibited in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
Thank you, Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel, 1858-1913.
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