[org.whodat]

I read a few years back of ford experiments with conventional style V8 engines made out of glass, using no oil, they turned 12 and 14,000 rpm. Don't know what became of the experiments.

[barb-tex]

Glass Engines, Remember the Vega and teflon lining in the cylinders. HF also built with fiberglass.
barbra ann

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

Ford experiments with conventional style V8 engines made out of glass, using no oil, they turned 12 and 14,000 rpm. Don't know what became of the experiments.

I don't know how glass would work out as it is actually a "super cooled" liquid which gets softer as the temperature increases, it doesn't actually melt (go thru a phase change) at any particular temperature.

I had heard about GM working with high strength ceramics which have very good high temperature characteristics and can take compressive loading in stride. The down side is they are very brittle and are lousy in tension. I know they got some demomstration "proof of concept" prototypes running but what happened after that I lost track of.

I worked for a hydraulics firm that built vane pumps. We also tried ceramics for pumps that ran fireproof fluids as they generally have low lubricity. We found that it could work if a ceramic ring was shrunk fit inside a steel ring. That left the ceramic under a large compressive loading much like tempered glass. The problem was the vanes that slid along the inner surface of the ring. We tried just about every tool steel and heat treat we could think of up to titanium carbide but the wear rates were uniformly unacceptable. When you really think about what we had invented was an "inside out" grinding wheel which ate up the mating parts as fast as we could shove them into the pump!

Some things just aren't meant to be...

Regards,
GtG