4 ms·
Four cylinders is inherently more balanced than three. Fatigue is the second worst killer of mechanisms, right after corrosion. Vibration causes fatigue. The be
by vlehto 11y ago
Four cylinders is inherently more balanced than three. Fatigue is the second worst killer of mechanisms, right after corrosion. Vibration causes fatigue. The best ideas to balance inherently unstable engine involve balancing axle. But even they usually are not as good as inherently balanced.
- thenewwazoo 11y agoBut the entire point is that they've invented a novel mechanism for counterbalancing vibrations that are unique to the three cylinder. When you do that, you reduce vibration. This reduces fatigue. It's worth noting as well that there's no such thing as "inherently balanced" when you're talking about ICEs (except perhaps the inline 6). Four-cylinders are inherently balanced in one mode (first harmonic), imbalanced in another (secondary imbalance), and exhibit torsional effects that may as well be imbalance.
- vlehto 11y agoYou have point there. No ICE is really balanced, there are 16(?) different vibration modes and the best boxer 6 engines can deal with maybe 4 of them. I have pretty strong gut feeling that the 1st harmonic is more important than the 15 other modes combined. This far engines with odd numbers of pistons have been exception. Until we go to single row star engines, but they got replaced pretty quickly with two row star engines. Which can take the 1st harmonic into account.