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).
Damper wheel design, materials, and friction characteristics, including a technical sketch.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 178\3\ img163 | |
| Date | 11th May 1932 guessed | |
| (3) I have no confidence in going back to well lubricated ferodo unless it is free from gummy make up. (We could find what surface is best, and if dry is better than lubricated.) The material I have always favoured is 'vulcanised fibre', and I suggested it should be used thin so that the moisture does not make it take up all the clearance. The necessity of limiting the clearance perhaps does not exist in centrifugal loading. Anyway when we used this dry we did not seem able to make a bad slipper wheel - i.e in the old days we could tighten up really tightly. Ignore for the moment the effect of this material swelling with moisture, and test if this surface dry and lubricated gives any advantage. Finally we ought to redesign our damper wheels, increasing the weight (inertia) all we possibly can. There can be no doubt that the greater the momentum of the wheel the greater the range of adjustment and the more effective it can be made. I hoped to send some better sketches, but our own type which we call 'low inertia' (disc only on crankshaft) seems the best. The wheel should be made of 2 stiff halves firmly bolted together just outside the disc, and one of the two friction surfaces carried by our flexible corrugated disc spring loaded to give the friction required. [Image of a component cross-section with annotations] Bolts. Ferrule through window. Bolts permanent. and rigid. Grease retaining, two single row N. D.{John DeLooze - Company Secretary} ball bearings if dry friction found superior. As centrifugal loading with ordinary friction leads to complication we might find this unnecessary with heavier wheel and dry friction. I do not remember exactly if we prefer entirely free damper wheel, or if we can get any advantage by our internal spring in the end of the crankshaft. R.{Sir Henry Royce} | ||