Online courses available on engine design

[autozoned290]

Hey guys... I am trying to get a better handle of engine and powertrain systems in general and am on the lookout for any short courses/online courses that I can do to get a better idea about the subject. I have looked at SAE courses but am not sure if its worth the investment. Any suggestions or ideas are welcome.

 

[turbomotor]

I am not a Wisconsin grad, but I have always thought that their on-line offering could be interesting:

http://mees.engr.wisc.edu/

Any badgers out there care to comment?

 

[autozoned290]

I was looking at that course but that is a little out of my budget at this moment of time. Thanks for the suggestion Turbomotor.

 

[GregLocock]

MIT have much of their lecture material online, free. They have at least one well respected engine guy.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mechanical-engineering/2-61-internal-combustion-engines-spring-2008/

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[autozoned290]

Thanks for the link Greg. What do you think about the below link

http://training.sae.org/credentialing/siengine/

 

[GregLocock]

9 days training is nice, that seems quite horrifically expensive to me if I were paying myself, typically my company pays 1500 for a 3 day course in a classroom, not a canned set of videos. At the end of it you'd have done what, engine 101?



Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[GregLocock]

...with no lab time,

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[xander18]

Hello AutoZoned,

I was the engine and drivetrain leader for a Formula SAE team at a college with very little internal combustion engine or automotive resources. The closest research or expertise was in the combustion lab where they were performing fuel studies, but it was mostly applicable to jet engines. So I embarked on a self-inflicted curriculum. The disadvantages of self teaching are numerous but the price can't be beat. This is far from a replacement for a course or structured instruction but it allowed me to make the jump from being a backyard mechanic motorhead to thinking about engines as an engineer and starting to understand the fundamental principles behind them. My friends working on chassis and suspension took Claude Rouelle's Optimum G course but I found no readily available and affordable equivalent for engine design and tuning.

The main drawback to self teaching is that you don't know what you don't know. If you're just googling and reading disconnected bits of information you might be missing an entire aspect of engines. For this reason I focused on textbooks; by reading through the entire book it's a lot harder to entirely miss an aspect. My knowledge was certainly shallow in some areas (like vibration, as you may notice in my other recent posts on this board ) but I at least had a good overall knowledge and I haven't embarrassed myself while working at an engine design company for the last few months.

The books I recommended, in approximate order:

Four-Stroke Performance and Tuning by A Graham Bell: This book is really targeted at an engine enthusiast, not an engineer. But for someone who only knows the basics of engines it's very readable but also starts to introduce some math and physics.

Design and Simulation of Four Stroke Engines by Gordon Blair: This is a pretty popular book and it'll cover very similar topics to Bell's book but much more in depths. It focuses on modification and performance tuning of an existing engine as opposed to ground up engine design. Lots of intake, exhaust, and some basic combustion topics.

Internal Combustion Engine Fundamentals by J Heywood: Despite 'fundamentals' in the name this is a more advanced book. It focuses a lot on combustion dynamics and the thermodynamic properties of engines.

These three books give a good base in the prime motivating aspect of engines, the combustion and pumping process. If you start here it'll give you a good basis for getting into the more advanced topics that are necessary for ground up engine design, like structure, balance, vibration, and the like.

 

[autozoned290]

Hi Xander. Thanks for all the great advice. This gives me a hope about self learning. I have always enjoyed doing that but have been skeptical in this scenario due to my lack of knowledge and the simple fact that I did not know where to begin. I started looking into the SAE website and courses to get a head-start. The disadvantage I had was I did not have enough exposure to working engines and do not have the practical know how which you possess. I was reading the post about your 2 cylinder, 4 piston design and its quite fascinating to say the least reading through the post specially the testing and sim validation. As a recent grad working in a small firm wearing different hats is also an adventure though I don't always enjoy it.

 

[xander18]

I'm a huge advocate of self-teaching. I think it's the single most valuable skill I learned in engineering school. You can always drop in on a place like this to ask questions. Personally I answer a lot of questions on Quora and reddit about engines as well. If you shoot me an email at my username + @gmail.com I'll send you some presentations I made for my Formula team on engine basics that might help get the ball rolling for you.

Having some hands-on experience could be a great advantage. You might look into getting a project car, even something really simple like an old Civic or Miata, and start wrenching on it. If you eventually do some performance work on it you'll be forced to apply some fundamental engineering (air in terms of both flow and pressure, heat rejection, mechanical dynamics, etc). Getting a car like that and doing some intake/exhaust work and putting on a MegaSquirt EFI system would have you pretty up to speed without breaking the bank. Doing an EFI system would be good learning experience because just like anything in the realm of controls you have to accurately characterize a system to develop controls for it. Just keep your engineering head on and look at it like any other system and you'll be okay.