Engine Air Flow Demonstrated With Great Visual

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What better way to show engine air flow than with giant balloons?

Have you ever wondered just how much air is running through your engine? Well, curious minds want to know, so Jason from Engineering Explained shows us this air consumption experiment.

The way to solve this is incredibly straight forward. Engine displacement is your starting point, then times that by your RPM limit. Since the Corvette engine is a 4-stroke, you have to divide by 2 to make up the exhaust stroke. Presuming that an engine is running at 100% efficiency, you can calculate how many liters or cubic meters of air, as that is a 1:1000 ratio.

CHECK OUT: What Forum Members Are Saying About This Impressive Demonstration

One thing worth noting is that air entering the engine is colder, and therefore more dense. Additionally, the expansion of the air/fuel mixture also means the air exiting the engine is greatly expanded, due to combustion and being far hotter.

So while the intake side of things might be easy to solve with displacement X RPM / 2, on the exit side, things are much different. Though it may consume all of the air in the fictional garage mentioned in the video, it would fill that same space much quicker with exhaust fumes.

Patrick Morgan is an instructor at Chicago's Autobahn Country Club and contributes to a number of Auto sites, including MB World, Honda Tech, and 6SpeedOnline. Keep up with his latest racing and road adventures on Twitter and Instagram!


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