Tank Engines are Weird
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Intro
Designing a tank is an exercise in managing contradictions. Tanks want to install as much armor and firepower as possible, which comes with the cost of a lot of weight. To move all that, the
Managing contradictions
engine needs a lot of torque, specifically low-end torque. Torque that's available at low engine RPMs when the tank is just beginning to move and has the most inertia to overcome. The easiest way to do that is to increase engine displacement. Larger piston cylinders hold bigger explosions, raising the twisting force at the crankshaft, but an engine like this takes up more space within a tank hole, which means a bigger hole with more area to cover with heavy armor, which then needs a bigger engine to move around. We're just back at square one. The key
Engine design
to designing a world-class tank then really comes down to engine design, and tanks have used an incredible variety of engine layouts in the pursuit of low-end torque and power. The M1 Sherman of World War II was mostly packaged with whatever engines were available, and sometimes the engines available weren't powerful enough. So, this contraption
A57
was created. This is the A57 installed in the M4 A4. It's really just five Chrysler inline six-cylinder engines, all driving their power to a single drive shaft, combining to create a 370 horsepower, 20. 5 L displacement, 30cylinder multi-bank configuration. The
T64A
Soviets packaged the T64A with an innovative two-stroke opposed 5-cylinder engine with two pistons in each cylinder pushing towards each other, eliminating heavy cylinder heads and valves. While the M1 Abrams uses a jet engine attached to a gearbox taken from a helicopter.
The Future
But the next step in tank engine development is already taking shape and the future may well be electric. With electric motors providing instantaneous torque, they are extremely attractive. But all of that weight is going to need a lot of energy to move around. So the next generation of tanks are going to take a leaf out of the Prius handbook. They are going hybrid. We go into way more detail about the history of tank engine development in the fulllength video on our YouTube channel, Real Engineering.
Другие видео автора — Real Engineering
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