NO German development in the field of diesel engines is worth applying immediately to American units, Mr. Rosen finds, although some of the design refinements he describes might improve performance. His information comes from files of the United States Naval Technical Mission in Europe, of which he was a member.
The Germans concentrated on reducing weight per horsepower. Supercharging is the principal means by which output was improved. Both speed and bmep were increased to reduce cubical dimensions.
Considerable work was done on fuels testing. A universal fuel test engine tested a variety of combustion systems at varying compression ratios. Another machine was well suited for determining cetane numbers of diesel fuels.
Government and industry had invested 4,000,000 marks in a laboratory for the study of stress problems, chiefly those of crankshafts.