question about a possible missed opportunity ...

[thorsim]

i like to think about this kind of stuff ...

so here is my thought about one of these things ...

the FW190 had the cooling fan in the cowling increasing the airflow over the engine. 

did the design team miss an opportunity for easy higher air pressure at the air intake through use of the fan mechanism? 

i.e. had they had some sort of air sealed compartment or part of the engine where the fan was forcing air into it at greater pressure than the rest of the air under the cowling wouldn't that have improved the performance at higher altitudes?

just thinking ...

+S+

t

[Bronk]

Would be sucking heated air... not sure that is the best thing to help produce hp.

[thorsim]

well yea that probably would be the case if you went for a "sealed" cowling and used back pressure by limiting the flow that was allowed out of the cowling.  you could i suspect increase the air pressure that way, i am not sure if that would have been much more heated air then the intakes were taking in already.

however i was thinking of extending openings of the air intakes to the front of the engine in a manner where fan increased the positive pressure inside the air intake, you could control it with some sort of pressure release valve in order to keep a constant pressure over various altitudes.  BTW i am mostly considering the air cooled FWs ...

thanks for the input i had not considered air temp until you brought it up

+S+

t

 

[Krusty]

The fan was a delicate balance. They added more blades to it in one later model, but it increased strain and workload on the engine for whatever reasons, so they reduced it back down to the previous number of fan blades.

You should look at a diagram of the original prototype design. They wanted to do a lot more, but had too many problems getting it to work properly, so they went with more of a streamlined cowling, rather than a ducted air setup.