Development Status of Isuzu Ceramic Engine 880011

Ceramics show high degree of heat resistance. But an attempt to build an adiabatic engine using ceramic materials should be carried out by full evaluation of characteristics of each ceramic material.The strength of ceramic parts are dependent on both their manufacturing processes and the mechanical and thermal stresses to which the parts are subjected. Full consideration should be given to these factors in evaluating ceramic parts.Even if a ceramic engine were manufactured after full consideration (1) to these factors, adiabatic engines proposed by R. Kamo and other researchers have had difficulty in realizing performance level and fuel economy as first suggested. Today, the adiabatic turbo compound engine still has many problems and themes to be addressed, some of which are adiabatic efficiency, combustion rate, intake air rate and method of recovering exhaust gas energy. (2),(3)On the other hand, however, an adiabatic engines with ceramic parts have already reached the stage where they can be actually used on automobiles. Further efforts, therefore, should be concentrated on attacking the aforementioned problems and themes to achieve the levels of performance suggested earlier.This paper is intended to report some part of the studies conducted by the author and his group.