Design For Efficiency And Reliability

During the past 15-20 years, the market requirements and the keen competition in the marine sector have resulted in significant technical developments which have reduced the specific fuel oil consumption of large marine diesel engines to below 160 g/kWh and enabled these engines to burn heavy fuel oils of ever deteriorating quality, while still maintaining high reliability and low maintenance costs. The heavy technical and financial burden of this development race has, at the same time, changed the slow-speed marine diesel engine industry into a licensor/licensee-structure where a small number of licensors develop engines, and a much larger number of licensees build them.

A similar technical/structural development may also occur in the automotive engine field. With this in mind, the paper outlines the design requirements and describes how these are met in the large two-stroke crosshead marine engines, and it highlights some of the special process and hardware features which might inspire developments in the automotive engine field.