From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
The development and testing of an evaporative cooling system for the Phantom I Armoured Car.
| Identifier | Morton\M21\ img081 | |
| Date | 12th April 1933 | |
| To R.{Sir Henry Royce} from Ha/PaV. C. Sg.{Arthur F. Sidgreaves - MD} Wor.{Arthur Wormald - General Works Manager} C. Rg.{Mr Rowledge} By.{R.W. Bailey - Chief Engineer} C. Ir. Hx. C. F1. Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}/PaV.6/KT.12.4.33. -------------------- EVAPORATIVE COOLING SYSTEM ON PHANTOM I ARMOURED CAR. Introduction. Armoured cars operating in hot countries with ordinary water cooled engine systems are liable to suffer severely from water loss when boiling. A suggestion was therefore made that it would be advantageous to employ evaporative cooling on such vehicles. Furthermore the War Office desired to obtain running experience of Phantom engines under evaporatively cooled conditions since they are considering the possibility of using these engines in light tanks. Some time ago, two armoured cars were converted to an evaporatively cooled system in which the condensate was returned from the hotwell to the header tank by means of a small gear type pump driven from the governor drive of the engine. Recently on one car, this drive sheared after a short period of operation, and in consequence it was decided to use an injector system to deal with the condensate. The injector system was developed in connection with evaporatively cooled aero engine work owing to the unreliability of the gear type hotwell pump. It has the advantages of simplicity of design and operation, having no mechanical parts to go wrong. The following report deals with the tests of this system. Range of Investigation. The system was subjected to tests on the working of the injector and to determine the necessary sizes of restriction washers to enable the system to work under the most severe operational conditions. On completion of these tests, thorough road tests were carried out to observe the behaviour of the system under operational conditions. These included hill climbing tests, low speed tests on top gear, and high speed tests with the radiator shutters closed. Summary of Results. On the dynamometer tests it was found that satisfactory results were obtained using .500" restriction washers in the two cylinder block inlets and one .875" restriction in the water pump suction pipe. No trouble of any kind was experienced during the road tests. | ||