alt Hacker NewsCombustion engine web-based simulator
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@AngeTheGreat on youtube is worth mentioning here, I think.
He has a whole series on building out engine simulators of various types, and even published a Steam game for steam engine simulation.
His work is notable because he leans heavily into generating sound directly from the simulations.
So i'll throw this out there. When I was a growing up back in the 50's (yeah, way back then) I was given a model of a v-8 engine to build. It was clear plastic, had pistons, crankshaft, valves, and little red lights for the spark plugs. Small battery powered motor (I think in the starter motor) made everything go round and rounds. One of the coolest models I ever built as a kid.
I wish this had a stepper so I could see how things change at each point in the cycle. But even without, quite cool to play with.
Why have a kW/Nm - HP/lbf setting, but no metric/US option for the bore and stroke?
Others here are suspicious of the numbers, but at least for the actual engine in my daily driver which I've dyno'd before, it seems reasonable with around 400HP and 450lbf for a 400ci NA V8.
Gave it my own spin once: https://github.com/glouw/ensim4
Makes audio too
Calling this AI slop would be generous. If we made a list of the things wrong with it we would be here all day. Nothing has an effect on redline RPM, you can create compression and turbo combos that would instantly grenade an engine, the preset “super car” has 200hp?
The only thing it illustrates is the authors lack of understanding.
I like It, no matter what
Exhaust temp increase with decreasing lambda, and peaks at 0.7 lambda. That part of the model is likely incorrect.
Nice little project, I inputted the dimensions of a engine I've been building (b20-vtec) and it estimated 160whp which sounds low but I also can't set up my cams properly because it looks like this was designed for SOHC engines.
Very cool either way.
Interesting, I had Fable generate me a summary using an identical style, with the same square design, bg and yellow highlights
187 N/A BSFC @ 2000rpm and open throttle. Tried emulating a DI 2GR-FXE. Seems a bit optimistic, but still fun to play with.
I had just been daydreaming about a v12 with tiny pistons and wondering how that would behave … now I can find out … turns out it would be terrible at low speed
I don't understand how the throttle and RPM can be modified independently. Surely the RPM depends on the throttle?
So if I set the animation speed to 1:1 and set the RPM to 3000, that's what it would look like inside the engine when I'm ready to shift gears? Seems WAY faster than what I expected in real life
Very nice! Reminds of this classic, focused mostly on the sounds: https://github.com/ange-yaghi/engine-sim
From the pre-slop era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKT-sKtR970
3638 kW / 4878 hp is the most powerful engine I could build with this.
Am I missing something? Setting the throttle to 0% seems to do nothing?
this is really impressive. actual movements with live diagrams looks great. you can consider adding sound to take it to another level.
I was hoping for a two stroke mode as well!
If LLMs had come out when I was younger, I would have been able to understand things this easily. There are some incorrect implementations, but they're incredibly helpful for grasping the concepts.
really interesting project - would be good to see a link to a repo
I am genuinely curious why OP thinks this slop post should be of interest to others. Nobody cares how you're prompting an LLM, guys.
would be awesome if it could generate sounds like how lfs does it
we have all heard of V8 ... now visualize a W12
... two pairs of V3 in a Bentley
If you're looking for a carefully crafted/written work to explain internal combustion engines, look no further than this one https://ciechanow.ski/internal-combustion-engine/ (the Mechanical Watch article from the same author was featured on HN a while ago).