AUT - Dane Christophersen
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Dane Christophersen
Project - Exhaust system design
“I had to gather as much information and learn everything I could about high performance exhaust systems and their design in all kinds of applications. Included was the basis for energy recovery and scavenging that is essential for any high performance engine. I then had to consolidate all that information and turn it into a logical sequence of theoretical formulae that enabled me to build, test and report on. Keeping the project relevant and achievable in context of what we were trying to achieve was important to getting a good result.”
Challenges
“The theoretical analysis was difficult. Ideas and solutions usually came in the middle of the night and oral presentations are never fun.”
Highlights
“It was a whole year of work so wrapping it all up by handing in the big, thick and colourful report was good. To achieve something despite a lot of independence and only guidance from staff, rather than the higher level of direction of earlier papers, was rewarding. We were given some rope to play with and this allowed a sense of ownership of the project. To see some really good results when testing another Indian motorcycle on the dynamometer was the most fun. My proposed systems all worked really well and we saw some good performance improvements. Leading up to testing there was apprehension that performance losses could occur due to the fundamental design characteristics of the engine not suiting the types of exhaust systems I had proposed.”
Lessons learned
“I confirmed there are lots of idiots around when it comes to vehicle exhausts. Technically, I learned there is a lot of art to the design of exhausts. Attempts to properly model what is actually going on inside a pulsating flow exhaust system are extremely difficult. Experimentation definitely has a part to play and puts theory in its place. I didn't hope to create an accurate model for this project, but I did pursue the theoretical side to a level that allowed me to explain my ideas and help to justify my designs. This meant learning a lot about pressure waves and wave propagation which I hadn't known about before.“
“I had to gather as much information and learn everything I could about high performance exhaust systems and their design in all kinds of applications. Included was the basis for energy recovery and scavenging that is essential for any high performance engine. I then had to consolidate all that information and turn it into a logical sequence of theoretical formulae that enabled me to build, test and report on. Keeping the project relevant and achievable in context of what we were trying to achieve was important to getting a good result.”
Challenges
“The theoretical analysis was difficult. Ideas and solutions usually came in the middle of the night and oral presentations are never fun.”
Highlights
“It was a whole year of work so wrapping it all up by handing in the big, thick and colourful report was good. To achieve something despite a lot of independence and only guidance from staff, rather than the higher level of direction of earlier papers, was rewarding. We were given some rope to play with and this allowed a sense of ownership of the project. To see some really good results when testing another Indian motorcycle on the dynamometer was the most fun. My proposed systems all worked really well and we saw some good performance improvements. Leading up to testing there was apprehension that performance losses could occur due to the fundamental design characteristics of the engine not suiting the types of exhaust systems I had proposed.”
Lessons learned
“I confirmed there are lots of idiots around when it comes to vehicle exhausts. Technically, I learned there is a lot of art to the design of exhausts. Attempts to properly model what is actually going on inside a pulsating flow exhaust system are extremely difficult. Experimentation definitely has a part to play and puts theory in its place. I didn't hope to create an accurate model for this project, but I did pursue the theoretical side to a level that allowed me to explain my ideas and help to justify my designs. This meant learning a lot about pressure waves and wave propagation which I hadn't known about before.“
Last updated: 15 Sep 2011 4:58pm