Sixteen cylinder engine

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16-cylinder engine of an Auto Union Type C

The sixteen cylinder is a type of reciprocating piston engine , in particular internal combustion engines .

description

Types

Sixteen cylinders are almost exclusively available as water-cooled V-engines , as they would be very long as an in- line engine and would pose great challenges in the manufacture of the crankshaft or engine block . In addition, U and H engines with two crankshafts and double V engines with four cylinder banks and one crankshaft were implemented.

The engines can be designed as both gasoline and diesel engines .

Applications

Cadillac V16 Roadster 1930

Sixteen-cylinder engines are mainly used as large engines in diesel locomotives , dump trucks , large excavators , motor ships and power plants . They are also used in small numbers for a few luxury- class passenger car models , super sports cars , racing cars and aircraft. But these are mostly small series or individual pieces. The two Zeppelins LZ 129 “Hindenburg” and LZ 130 “Graf Zeppelin II” were also powered by V16 engines.

Smoothness

Sixteen-cylinder V-engines run very smoothly, because the high number of cylinders means that the free inertia forces are better balanced than in V-engines with a smaller number of cylinders.

Only in one exceptional case - the Cizeta V16T super sports car - does the V16 have a different crankshaft offset or firing order than the usual one and is designed to reach very high speeds. Therefore the running noise is less cultivated.

Automobiles with sixteen-cylinder engines

  • In 1935, Alfa Romeo built the Bimotore racing car for the European Grand Prix Championship , which was powered by two individual eight-cylinder in-line engines (one in the front and one in the rear). This car reached up to 325 km / h and developed up to 540 hp. A successor to this vehicle from 1938 and 1939 , the Grand Prix single-seater Tipo 316 , then had a real V16 engine that developed 440 hp and accelerated the car to around 300 km / h. The development of sixteen- cylinder engines at Alfa Romeo was finally completed by the Grand Prix single-seater Tipo 162 from 1939/40 with an output of 490 hp and the Tipo 163 racing sedan from 1941, powered by the same engine had a V16 engine with four valves per cylinder inclined at 90 ° in the head, only one was built.
  • Bugatti built the T-45 racing car with a sixteen-cylinder engine in 1929 . The engine was based on a design that Ettore Bugatti had developed as an aircraft engine in the last years of the First World War . It consisted of two independent, side-by-side eight cylinders, each with its own crankshaft. The crankshafts were connected to one another by a countershaft in the middle. This design was called the U-16 engine. The displacement was 3.8 liters; each cylinder had three valves. Two copies were made by 1930; one vehicle was used at the factory in hill climbs. Another sixteen-cylinder model, the T 47 , was designed as a grand sports car, but was never completed. The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 sports car, which was produced from 2005 to 2015 , like its successor, the Bugatti Chiron , has a turbocharged 16-cylinder engine with a displacement of 8.0 liters.
W16 engine of the Bugatti Chiron
  • In 1929, Maserati developed the Maserati V4, a racing car with 16 cylinders. The car won two Grand Prix races.
  • Cadillac built two types with a sixteen-cylinder engine in the 1930s: From 1930 to 1935 the Series 452 was produced with a 7.4-liter V16, followed by the Series 90 with a 7.1-liter V16 until 1940. The vehicles were offered with a wide variety of bodies - coupes, roadsters, sedans - from various manufacturers; a total of around 4,300 chassis or vehicles were produced. In 2003 Cadillac presented the prototype Sixteen , which should be reminiscent of the V16 from the 1930s. The car was equipped with a 13.6 liter V16 engine. He never went into series.
  • From 1931 to 1933 Marmon produced an 8.0 liter V16 engine with which Marmon wanted to compete against Cadillac, but which only achieved very little distribution. Contemporary reports attributed Marmon's sixteen-cylinder engine to be even smoother than the Cadillac design.
  • The Auto Union racing cars in the 750 kg class had V16 engines in the 1930s. At the beginning (1934) the V16 developed 295 HP with a displacement of 4.4 l (type A), already in 1935 373 HP (type B) were achieved from 5 l displacement and 520 HP (type C) from 6 l displacement in 1936.
  • The Bucciali Double-Huit was presented in France in 1931 , a product with a history that has not yet been fully clarified. In particular, it is not clear whether the engine was functional and - if so - how many copies were made.
  • In Great Britain, the BRM racing team developed a sixteen-cylinder engine for use in Formula 1 in 1950 and 1966 . The V16 engine for 1950 to 1952 was extremely small with a displacement of 1.5 liters; it was boosted by a two-stage Rolls-Royce centrifugal compressor. It developed around 440 kW at 12,000 rpm and was therefore clearly superior to the competition in terms of performance, but on the other hand very vulnerable, which often led to failures. The best Formula 1 result that the BRM P15 achieved with the V16 was fifth place in the 1951 British Grand Prix . The second sixteen-cylinder engine from BRM was designed as an H-16 engine, that is, it consisted of two 180 ° V eight-cylinder engines lying one above the other with a common engine block, which were coupled via gears. The engine was very heavy and, in the words of motorsport historian David Hodges, “hopelessly unreliable” (“desperately unreliable”). The engine was installed in the BRM P83 racing car and used by the BRM works team in a total of 32 races from late 1966 to early 1968 . The overweight car - we were talking about 135 kilograms above the prescribed minimum weight - only crossed the finish line twelve times; the best result was a second place for Jackie Stewart .
  • In Switzerland , Sbarro developed the Royale model in 1976 . Externally, the four-door berline vehicle was modeled on the Bugatti Type 41 (" Bugatti Royale "); Specifically, the body designed by Park Ward in 1933 for chassis 41-131 served as a model. The vehicle was powered by a sixteen cylinder Sbarro made by connecting two Rover V8s . The Sbarro Royale was built at the request of a customer from the Arab region and remained a one-off.
  • The Cizeta V16T was produced in Italy from 1991 to 1995 .
  • In 2006, the German manufacturer Isdera built the Isdera Autobahnkurier 116i as a one-off . The 2 + 2-seater sports car in the style of the 1930s is powered by two V8 engines with a combined displacement of 10 liters.
  • Defining Extreme Vehicles Car Industry in Dubai has been working on the Devel Sixteen , an Arab hyper sports car with a turbo V16 engine with a displacement of 12.3 liters , since around 2010 . This engine is said to have more than 5000 HP., The prototype appeared in 2013. Development was delayed for a long time because no tires existed or could be developed that could withstand this power and the desired top speed.

literature

  • HG Conway et al. a .: "The Bugattis", exhibition catalog of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, 1983.
  • David Hodges : A – Z of Grand Prix Cars, 2nd Edition 2001, ISBN 1-86126-339-2 (English)

Web links

Commons : Sixteen Cylinder Engine  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Devel Sixteen (2017): Motor & Technology. Retrieved October 30, 2019 .
  2. ↑ FOCUS Online: This monster is supposed to blow the Bugatti Veyron to dust. Retrieved October 30, 2019 .
  3. ↑ The 5,000-hp Devel Sixteen car arrives, but there are no tires - another 400 km / h car. November 23, 2017. Retrieved October 30, 2019 .