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Air Intake


Rosarium

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Hello!

Since the dawn i could understand how the intake influence the engines. Now i can't really understand how the air intake system works, really it look like faked in every test i have made.

My tries brought me this conclusion: every engines have a altitude range were they works. you place a useless intake and the engine works as the same as with 4 or 6 more suitable ones. Rapier always stop to works at 30k, the trust always decade at the same altitude. Seems that the system is auto limited. 

So my request and my question: will be possible to have a more clear in game value to understand the relations between the engine and the air intake? apparently the system is totally broken. 

And i ask the community their experiences to understand better this odd. Have you some math to show? have you found a way to understand the actual system? what do you think about air intakes?

Thanks.

 

 

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Here's a cool graph.

Also check out the other replies, particularly the comments of GoSlash27 whom goes on to answer quite a lot of questions.

Edited by Guest
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11 hours ago, ottothesilent said:

Whether or not an engine turns on or not is not really an accurate test. If you increase the number of intakes, to a point, you get higher performance. Used to be, there was a resource tab for Intake Air.

i've tried to place intakes inline with the engine, and seems that the trust is higher than placing the same inline intakes laterally, is that the intake flow or just a matter of aerodynamic? who knows...

how to get better performance? i get better performance with less intakes with this example, may your can explain better your tries please?

5 hours ago, Rath said:

That doesn't really work anymore.  Each engine can only really use one of the inline intakes, or a few of the radials.

True??!?! this is SAD!

 

Edited by Rosarium
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1 hour ago, Rosarium said:

True??!?! this is SAD!

Not true. Placement of intakes relative to engines doesn't matter in the least. Placement of intakes relative to air flow does.

Intakes produce a resource, "Intake Air". Think of it like fuel, or electric charge. Each intake contains a small tank for Intake Air, and a part that produces more of it; how much, at what rate, at which altitudes and speeds depends on a bunch of factors, specific to given intake model. The effect though is that the "tanks" fill - sort of like a solar panel plus batteries. There is no specific binding between the "intake" and "tank", one intake can fill the "tanks" in all other intakes just fine, just as a solar panel fills batteries.

And then there's the engine which drains all available tanks of intake air. It doesn't care which intakes, where, and how filled. Like, say, a light on your ship, keeps shining as long as there's EC in any of the batteries, never caring where the batteries are or how powered they are.

Completely regardless of the above, engine performance depends on a bunch of factors, like speed and air pressure. Depending on that performance, rate at which the "tanks" are drained of intake air changes. The engine may sputter out due to too low pressure, still having plenty of intake air, or it can choke and keep igniting and sputtering out as it drains intake air faster than intakes can fill it.

In normal situation, intakes produce intake air at a pace vastly higher than engines require, and engines drain it really fast too; all intake air in the "tanks" combined, without supply from intakes lasts for maybe 3 seconds of flight. Now if you have not enough intakes, or intakes that perform poorly in given conditions, the engine might outpace the intake. But in great most cases, it will lose thrust due to excessive speed or too low pressure and as result nearly cease draining intake air, long before your intakes cease to provide it.

Conclusion: Get a reasonable amount of intakes of profile that best matches your intended speeds (shock cone for hypersonic, ram for supersonic, circular for subsonic), point them against the "wind", and don't sweat it. You really don't need much to keep your engine satisfied until it sputters out for entirely different reasons.

 

 

 

Edited by Sharpy
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23 hours ago, Sharpy said:
Spoiler

 

Not true. Placement of intakes relative to engines doesn't matter in the least. Placement of intakes relative to air flow does.

Intakes produce a resource, "Intake Air". Think of it like fuel, or electric charge. Each intake contains a small tank for Intake Air, and a part that produces more of it; how much, at what rate, at which altitudes and speeds depends on a bunch of factors, specific to given intake model. The effect though is that the "tanks" fill - sort of like a solar panel plus batteries. There is no specific binding between the "intake" and "tank", one intake can fill the "tanks" in all other intakes just fine, just as a solar panel fills batteries.

And then there's the engine which drains all available tanks of intake air. It doesn't care which intakes, where, and how filled. Like, say, a light on your ship, keeps shining as long as there's EC in any of the batteries, never caring where the batteries are or how powered they are.

Completely regardless of the above, engine performance depends on a bunch of factors, like speed and air pressure. Depending on that performance, rate at which the "tanks" are drained of intake air changes. The engine may sputter out due to too low pressure, still having plenty of intake air, or it can choke and keep igniting and sputtering out as it drains intake air faster than intakes can fill it.

In normal situation, intakes produce intake air at a pace vastly higher than engines require, and engines drain it really fast too; all intake air in the "tanks" combined, without supply from intakes lasts for maybe 3 seconds of flight. Now if you have not enough intakes, or intakes that perform poorly in given conditions, the engine might outpace the intake. But in great most cases, it will lose thrust due to excessive speed or too low pressure and as result nearly cease draining intake air, long before your intakes cease to provide it.

Conclusion: Get a reasonable amount of intakes of profile that best matches your intended speeds (shock cone for hypersonic, ram for supersonic, circular for subsonic), point them against the "wind", and don't sweat it. You really don't need much to keep your engine satisfied until it sputters out for entirely different reasons.

 

 


 

So aerodynamic and part placement is the key. (sorry but i was still up to the old intake system where you could reach speed up to 2200m/s at 35km) now my best is 1500m/s at 24km and have to comple the orbit with brute force ). 

Thanks for the explanation that was really clear and usefull.

 

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There's also this mod that makes turbo jets behave realistically and do not care for air amount but the overall intake area instead:

"Inlet. Each engine requires a minimum inlet area (see right click menu in editor). Make sure you have enough inlet till you see "Inlet Area:100%" in flight. Each inlet has a TPR(total recovery pressure) that is dependent on Mach number and angle of attack. Avoid TPR loss by facing the inlet to the freestream. "

 

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44 minutes ago, Blaarkies said:

*you mean "thrust", right?

This is a mistake I see over and over on the internet... I can't understand where it comes from...

On 2/6/2017 at 9:57 PM, Rosarium said:

Since the dawn i could understand how the intake influence the engines. Now i can't really understand how the air intake system works, really it look like faked in every test i have made.

My tries brought me this conclusion: every engines have a altitude range were they works. you place a useless intake and the engine works as the same as with 4 or 6 more suitable ones. Rapier always stop to works at 30k, the trust always decade at the same altitude. Seems that the system is auto limited. 

Its not "faked" the old intake spamming over the past was very faked. This system is much more realistic now.

Engines require a certain amount of intake air, providing them with excess intake air does nothing. Just like if you supply a rocket engine with 440 units of oxidizer, and 1360 units of liquid fuel... that extra liquid fuel is just unusable dead weight.

Jet engine thrust is dependent upon the air density, and the speed. The altitude that rapiers will cut off depends upon the speed that you are going at that altitude 0 but yes, its always around 30km for any reasonable speed that you'd be going around 30km.

Different engines have different intake air requirements. Try to supply a goliath with a single supersonic radial intake -> its not going to work very well (assume you place it behind a node so that the goliath doesn't have its own functional intake).

Also, try making vtols using panthers/wheeseleysthat hover using only a few shock/ram/supersonic diverterless intakes-> They probably won't supply enough air because those intakes don't have much "static suction" - for that you want the engine nacelle.

Here's a guy complaining about loss of power on VTOLs:

Also, I'll go ahead and point you to my responses on this thread:

 

 

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