Originally posted by Golfer
68 the water isn't recycled. WEP water injection is not used to cool anything down (the purpose of the radiator) but rather injecting water in with the fuel/air mixture retards detonation giving you more oomph per puff of the cylinder.
There are liquid cooled engines, air cooled engines and both can use water injection which is nothing magical or super powered like an Afterburner, just a few more horsepower to help give you that last little edge to either win a fight or get away from it.
Water injection (ADI / MW-50 etc..) is injected into the eye of the supercharger cooling the charge allowing higher boost by preventing detonation. The cooler the charge the more pressure you can have in the cylinder before the fuel detonates.
It certainly does provide some cooling. In fact water injection isn't needed above FTH to prevent detonation. Above FTH the supercharger is already losing power. However, injecting water will still provide cooling.
(the water i would think would have been recycled like that in the radiator in your car)
It is not recycled in any way.
Americans Used water injection Germans used nitrox
ADI and MW-50 work the same way. MW-50 = water / methanol 50% each. The methanol prevents the water from freezing and aids in evaporation (which is how it cools the charge).
On the FW 190A and F series C3 injection was used to cool the charge. C3 fuel (right from the fuel line) is injected into the eye of the supercharger cooling the charge.
N20 was rarely used in standard service by the LW.
The Ki-84's engine could use methanol/water, thought I don't know if it was used in service or not.
The Japanese used Water/Methanol just like the Germans in several aircraft types (Ki-84, Ki-100 etc..)
But they would have a limit to how long they could use WEP till they landed and refilled the water tank right ?
All planes in AH should have a limit set for 'WEP'. In some cases exceeding the limit could cause engine damage but in most instances the limits were arrived at to pro-long engine life. The idea is to keep as many aircraft in service as possible and not to over burden your maintenance crews. In some instances where exceeding 'WEP' limits could result in damage.
In the case of water / adi / MW-50 these tanks need to be filled just like your fuel tank. When the water is gone running at max boost could case serious engine problems.
In AH all aircraft that have 'WEP' so that after a given amount of time your engine will heat up and automatically cut-off 'WEP'. After a given cool down period you have 'WEP' again. You could do this for ever. For most planes the time to 'WEP" cut-off varies, so does the cool down period.
Wep is basically pushing an engine beyond its normal operating RPM.
In AH the term 'WEP' is just a generic term assigned to max (emergency) power.
First you need to understand that there are various power settings for aircraft. These settings are arrived at in order to ensure a good service life, to increase range by conservation of fuel etc..
For example you would see something like this:
Take-off / emergency power
Max continuous - (max continuous power setting the aircraft can run at)
Climb / combat - (for German AC this was normally a 30 min limit.)
Special Emergency - 1, 3, 5, 10 min ect limit.
Exceeding those limits won't necessarily mean your engine would blow up or fail (but in some planes it could). What exceeding those limits will do is cut short expected service life of that engine and increase time between overhauls.
As the Cap'n points out with some aircraft 'emergency' power just means increasing rpm and boost and on others it would mean water injection etc...
