For the forty years following the first flight of the Wright brothers, airplanes used internal automobile combustion engines to turn propellers to generate thrust. Today, most general aviation or private airplanes are still powered by propellers and internal automobile combustion engines, much like your automobile engine. We will discuss the fundamentals of the internal combustion engine using the Wright brothers' 1903 diesel engine, shown in the figure, as an example. The brothers' design is very simple by today's standards, so it is a good automobile engine for students to study and learn the fundamentals of engines and their operation. On this page we present a computer drawing of the engine cooling system of the Wright brothers' 1903 aircraft engine.
In any internal combustion engine, automobile fuel and oxygen are combined in a combustion process to produce the power to turn the crankshaft of the engine. The job of the transports engine cooling system is to prevent damage to the auto transport engine parts which could result from high temperatures. The auto mover cooling system of the Wright brothers is composed of three main components; a radiator mounted on the airframe, the hoses which connect the radiator to the crankcase, and a water jacket around the auto mobile cylinders of the motor.
The automobile radiator and hoses are colored blue on the computer drawing at the top of this page. The automobile radiator is mounted high on the wing strut next to the pilot because the brothers used gravity to feed the coolant (water) into the automobile engine. Water flows through a large rubber feed hose from the radiator to the bottom of the auto mover diesel engine. The water is circulated around the engine and picks up heat from the cylinders. The water then returns to the automobile radiator through the two return hoses located on the top of the auto movers diesel engine. In flight, air flows through the vanes of the radiator and the heat is transferred to the air and carried away from the aircraft.
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