Oolite Bulletins

...you were just 30 years too early....

http://www.gizmag.com/laser-ignition-sp ... ive/18469/

I've taken out many a nonworking spark plug, only to find it wasn't working due to heavy amounts of black carbon residue.
Laser plugs sound nice, but in practice they might be worse: Being optical, they'll have a real showstopper from that black carbon gunk.

I'm going to give the Japanese scientists the benefit of the doubt and presume they've thought of this - perhaps the low fuel, symmetrical burn per firing well away from the laser itself will prevent this - after all the fuel in a traditional engine, as the article states, is pretty much only ignited near the spark, and hence, I presume, the reason for the localised carbonisation.

actually, the carbonisation is caused by incomplete fuel burning, which the laser plugs expect to reduce significantly. Thus, the carbon on the plugs becomes way less of an issue.

Hmmm...

Not really convinced by this. Incomplete combustion is caused by the wrong air/fuel mix. If you're getting carbon build up on your spark plugs your mixture is too rich. Spark plugs don't go black/sooty on a well tuned car.

As for the laser being able to ignite the mixture more effectively at multiple points - well 'maybe', but I can't see the benefits being that dramatic. This was all tried before with multicore plugs and it made the square root of bugger all difference.

Can't see why the explosion would expand faster regardless of what technology triggered it. Guess we'll wait and see.

As for getting 5-10% performance improvement on BHP and/or Torque as a result... yeah, whatever.

Oolite better play catch up soon though. I don't want to be driving around with four lasers under the bonnet when my Cobra can only hold 1 on the front mount!

Cheers,

Drew.

drew wrote:

Hmmm...

Not really convinced by this. Incomplete combustion is caused by the wrong air/fuel mix. If you're getting carbon build up on your spark plugs your mixture is too rich. Spark plugs don't go black/sooty on a well tuned car.

As for the laser being able to ignite the mixture more effectively at multiple points - well 'maybe', but I can't see the benefits being that dramatic. This was all tried before with multicore plugs and it made the square root of bugger all difference.

Can't see why the explosion would expand faster regardless of what technology triggered it. Guess we'll wait and see.

Oolite better play catch up soon though. I don't want to be driving around with four lasers under the bonnet when my Cobra can only hold 1 on the front mount!

Cheers,

Drew.

The way I read it was that in the current system - fuel first ignites close to the spark - propagation of the shock wave and additional ignition is therefore hemispherical at best - by focussing the laser so that it ignites fuel more centrally and therefore a more efficient spherical propagation of ignited fuel occurs. I guess if F1 cars take up the idea - that will be proof that it really works!

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I guess if F1 cars take up the idea - that will be proof that it really works!

The real proof comes when it’s banned in F1.

Ahruman wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I guess if F1 cars take up the idea - that will be proof that it really works!

The real proof comes when it’s banned in F1.

but true...