Harry Ricardo
Encyclopedia
Sir Harry Ricardo was one of the foremost engine designers and researchers in the early years of the development of the internal combustion engine
.
Among his many other works, he improved the engines that were used in the first tank
s, oversaw the research into the physics of internal combustion that led to the use of octane rating
s, was instrumental in development of the sleeve valve
engine design, and invented the Diesel pre-combustion chamber that made high-speed diesel engine
s possible.
in 1885, the eldest of three children, and only son of Halsey Ralph Ricardo, an architect, and his wife Catherine Jane, daughter of Sir Alexander Meadows Rendel
, a civil engineer. Ricardo was descended from a brother of the famous political economist David Ricardo
. He was one of the first people in England to see an automobile when his grandfather purchased one in 1898. He was from a wealthy family and educated at Rugby School
. In October 1903 he joined Trinity College, Cambridge
as a civil engineering
student. Ricardo had been using tools and building engines since the age of ten.
in West Sussex
.
(1.14 litres) of petrol. His engine was a single cylinder one and the heaviest entered, but his motorcycle design nevertheless won the competition, having covered a distance of forty miles. He was then persuaded to join the Professor of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics, Bertram Hopkinson
, working on research into engine performance. He graduated with a degree in 1906 and spent a further year researching at Cambridge
.
Ricardo is said by Percy Kidner, then Co-Managing Director of Vauxhall, to have had a hand in the design of the Vauxhall engine designed by Laurence Pomeroy
for the RAC 2000 mile trial of 1908.
Before graduation, Ricardo had designed a two-stroke motorcycle engine in order to study the effect of mixture strength upon the combustion process. When he graduated, a small firm, Messrs Lloyd and Plaister, showed an interest in making the engine. Ricardo produced designs for two different sizes, and the smaller one sold about 50 engines until 1914, when the war halted production.
In 1909 he designed a two-stroke 3.3 litre engine, for his cousin Ralph Ricardo, who had started up a small car manufacturing company, “Two Stroke Engine Company”, at Shoreham-by-Sea
. The engine was to be used in a car called the Dolphin. The cars were well made but it became apparent that they were costing more to make than the selling price. The company had better luck making two-stroke engines for fishing boats. However, in 1911 the firm folded and Ralph left for India
. Ricardo continued to design engines for small electric lighting sets, that were produced by two companies up to 1914.
design, the British Mark V. The Daimler engine used in the Mark I created copious amounts of smoke, which easily gave away its position. Ricardo was asked to look at the problem of reducing smoky exhaust gases and decided that a new engine was needed. Existing companies were able to undertake construction of such an engine but not the design, so Ricardo designed it himself. As well as having reduced smoke emissions, the new engine was much more powerful than the existing ones. The new six-cylinder engine produced 150 h.p., compared with 105 h.p., and later modifications produced 225 h.p. and 260 h.p. By April 1917 one hundred engines were being produced a week. A total of over 8,000 of his tank engines were put into military service, making it the first British-designed engine to be produced in large numbers. The Mark IX
tank, as well as the British version of the Mark VIII
, also used a Ricardo engine. In addition to being fitted to tanks, several hundred of the 150 h.p. engines were used in France for providing power and light to base workshops, hospitals, camps, etc.
, who was now Technical Director at the Air Ministry
, invited him to join the new engine research facility at the Department of Military Aeronautics, later to become the RAE
. In 1918 Hopkinson was killed while flying a Bristol Fighter
, and Ricardo took over his position. From that point on the department produced a string of experimental engines and research reports that constantly drove the British, and world, engine industry.
One of his first major research projects was on the problems of pre-ignition
, known as knocking or pinking. To study the problem he built a unique variable-compression
test engine. This led to the development of an octane rating
system for fuels, and considerable investment into octane improving additives and refining systems. The dramatic reduction in fuel use as a result of higher-octane fuel was directly responsible for allowing Alcock and Brown
to fly the Atlantic in their Vickers Vimy
bombers adapted with his modifications.
. He realised that turbulence
within the combustion chamber
increased flame speed, and that he could achieve this by offsetting the cylinder head
. He also realised that making the chamber as compact as possible would reduce the distance that the flame had to travel and would reduce the likelihood of detonation. He later developed the induction swirl chamber, which was an attempt to achieve orderly air motion in a diesel engine, the swirl being initiated by inclined ports
and accentuated by forcing the air into a small cylindrical volume. Finally he developed the compression swirl chamber for diesel engines. This design embodied intense swirl with a reasonable rate of pressure rise and good fuel consumption.
The compression swirl chamber design was called a “Comet” design and was subsequently licensed to a large number of companies for use in trucks, buses, tractors and cranes, as well as private cars and taxis. A Comet combustion chamber was used in the first Associated Equipment Company (AEC) diesel buses operated in 1931 by London Transport
. A later development of it featured in the world's first volume production diesel passenger car, the 1933 Citroën Rosalie
. This meant that Britain led the world in the field of high-speed diesels for road transport at that time. This advantage was lost to the continent as a result of the heavy tax imposed on diesel fuel in the budget of 1938.
Ricardo designed the 1921 T.T. Vauxhall engine which was described by Cecil Clutton in Motor Sport as a tour de force. Later developed by Mays
and Villiers
, who fitted a supercharger, the engine was still a winner fifteen years later.
In 1922 and 1923 Ricardo published a two-volume work “The Internal Combustion Engine.”
In 1927 he formed Ricardo Consulting Engineers in Shoreham-by-Sea
, which has become one of the foremost automotive consulting firms worldwide and is publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange
.
Although Ricardo did not invent the sleeve valve
, in 1927, he produced a seminal research paper that outlined the advantages of the sleeve valve
, and suggested that poppet valve
engines would not be able to offer power outputs much beyond 1500 hp (1,100 kW). A number of sleeve valve aircraft engines were developed following this paper, notably by Napier
, Bristol
and Rolls-Royce
. Bristol produced the Perseus
, Hercules
, Taurus
and the Centaurus
, Napier produced the Napier Sabre
, and Rolls-Royce produced the Eagle and Crecy
, all using sleeve valves.
In 1929 Ricardo was elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
engine in the Mosquito
by giving it an oxygen enrichment system to improve its performance.
Ricardo's work exerted influence all around the world. While his work guaranteed England a supply of fuels of ever-increasing power during the 1930s, it also helped Germany to develop synthetic high-octane aviation fuel, for example for the Focke-Wulf Fw 190
which inflicted heavy losses among the RAF's Supermarine Spitfire
s in 1942. Likewise, Ricardo's research on the detonation-inhibiting qualities of water injection
was exploited by German engineers (MW 50
) to provide their aero-engines with a particularly powerful special emergency power rating.
During 1941-5 Ricardo was a member of the War Cabinet engineering advisory committee.
Ricardo also assisted in the design of the combustion chambers and fuel control system of Sir Frank Whittle
’s jet engine.
. In 1945 he and his wife moved from Shoreham-by-Sea to Graffham
, also in West Sussex
. In 1948 Ricardo was knighted in recognition for his work in the field of internal combustion engineering.
In 1964 Ricardo retired from active work in Ricardo Consulting Engineers but kept in touch with various engineers within the company.
In 1974, at the age of 89, Ricardo broke his leg in a fall. He died six weeks later, on 18 May.
On 16 June 2005 a blue plaque
was placed outside the house where he was born in Bedford Square
, London. On 1 July 2010, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers bestowed an Engineering Heritage Award on Sir Harry Ricardo in recognition of his life and work as one of the foremost engineers of the twentieth century.
In 1978 the US Department of Energy
hired Ricardo Consulting to research the Stirling engine
as a car engine. A series of engines, eventually forty-five in total, were built to test this system and showed very low emissions, but the efficiency was compromised by the need to operate under transient conditions—the design was best running at a single speed, making it less than useful as a car engine. The Stirling may make an excellent engine for (particularly series) hybrid cars and has recently generated some interest in this role.
In 1986, the Voyager was the first aircraft to fly around the world non-stop and without refuelling. Ricardo Consulting redesigned the otherwise "stock" Teledyne Continental engine to incorporate a highly efficient combustion system and water cooling, thereby dramatically reducing drag and improving fuel economy.
Ricardo worked on petrol (or gasoline) engines throughout his career, including pioneering work on direct injection gasoline engines for aircraft engines in the 1930s, but his best-known work was in the development of high-speed diesel engines for cars. He was responsible for designing the combustion-chambers for the first two diesel car engines produced in quantity — the Citroën Rosalie and Mercedes-Benz 260D — in the mid-thirties. Later, various versions of Ricardo's Comet pre-combustion chamber for car diesels were deployed in countless engines over four decades, and the Comet remains one of Ricardo's best-known personal achievements in automobile engineering.
Today several stratified charge engine
s are in use in the automobile market. Stratified charge is a technology that has come of age relatively recently, as a result of advances in manufacturing and electronics, but it was a feature of the first engine that Harry Ricardo built, while still in his teens, in the early years of the 20th century.
Internal combustion engine
The internal combustion engine is an engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer in a combustion chamber. In an internal combustion engine, the expansion of the high-temperature and high -pressure gases produced by combustion apply direct force to some component of the engine...
.
Among his many other works, he improved the engines that were used in the first tank
Tank
A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...
s, oversaw the research into the physics of internal combustion that led to the use of octane rating
Octane rating
Octane rating or octane number is a standard measure of the anti-knock properties of a motor or aviation fuel. The higher the octane number, the more compression the fuel can withstand before detonating...
s, was instrumental in development of the sleeve valve
Sleeve valve
The sleeve valve is a type of valve mechanism for piston engines, distinct from the usual poppet valve. Sleeve-valve engines saw use in a number of pre-World War II luxury cars and in USA in the Willys-Knight car and light truck...
engine design, and invented the Diesel pre-combustion chamber that made high-speed diesel engine
Diesel engine
A diesel engine is an internal combustion engine that uses the heat of compression to initiate ignition to burn the fuel, which is injected into the combustion chamber...
s possible.
Early life
Harry Ricardo was born at 13 Bedford Square, LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1885, the eldest of three children, and only son of Halsey Ralph Ricardo, an architect, and his wife Catherine Jane, daughter of Sir Alexander Meadows Rendel
Alexander Meadows Rendel
Sir Alexander Meadows Rendel was a British civil engineer.Rendel was born in Plymouth. He was the eldest son of the engineer James Meadows Rendel and his wife Catherine Harris...
, a civil engineer. Ricardo was descended from a brother of the famous political economist David Ricardo
David Ricardo
David Ricardo was an English political economist, often credited with systematising economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. He was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator,...
. He was one of the first people in England to see an automobile when his grandfather purchased one in 1898. He was from a wealthy family and educated at Rugby School
Rugby School
Rugby School is a co-educational day and boarding school located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire, England. It is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain.-History:...
. In October 1903 he joined Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
as a civil engineering
Civil engineering
Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works like roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings...
student. Ricardo had been using tools and building engines since the age of ten.
Marriage
In 1911 Ricardo married Beatrice Bertha Hale, an art student at the Slade School of Art, in London. Her father, Charles Bowdich Hale, was the Ricardos’ family doctor. They had three daughters, and lived most of their married life at Shoreham-by-SeaShoreham-by-Sea
Shoreham-by-Sea is a small town, port and seaside resort in West Sussex, England. Shoreham-by-Sea railway station is located less than a mile from the town centre and London Gatwick Airport is away...
in West Sussex
West Sussex
West Sussex is a county in the south of England, bordering onto East Sussex , Hampshire and Surrey. The county of Sussex has been divided into East and West since the 12th century, and obtained separate county councils in 1888, but it remained a single ceremonial county until 1974 and the coming...
.
Car engines
In 1904, at the end of his first year, he decided to enter the University Automobile Club's event, which was a competition to design a machine that could travel the furthest on an Imperial quartQuart
The quart is a unit of volume equal to a quarter of a gallon, two pints, or four cups. Since gallons of various sizes have historically been in use, quarts of various sizes have also existed; see gallon for further discussion. Three of these kinds of quarts remain in current use, all approximately...
(1.14 litres) of petrol. His engine was a single cylinder one and the heaviest entered, but his motorcycle design nevertheless won the competition, having covered a distance of forty miles. He was then persuaded to join the Professor of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics, Bertram Hopkinson
Bertram Hopkinson
Bertram Hopkinson, CMG, FRS, was a patent lawyer and Professor of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics at Cambridge University. In this position he researched flames, explosions and metallurgy and became a pioneer designer of the internal combustion engine.Hopkinson was born in Birmingham, in 1874, the...
, working on research into engine performance. He graduated with a degree in 1906 and spent a further year researching at Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
.
Ricardo is said by Percy Kidner, then Co-Managing Director of Vauxhall, to have had a hand in the design of the Vauxhall engine designed by Laurence Pomeroy
Laurence Pomeroy
Laurence Henry Pomeroy was an English automotive engineer.Laurence Pomeroy was born in London and after leaving school served as an apprentice with the North London Railway Company. From there he became a draughtsman with Thornycroft in Basingstoke before moving to Vauxhall Motors in Luton in...
for the RAC 2000 mile trial of 1908.
Before graduation, Ricardo had designed a two-stroke motorcycle engine in order to study the effect of mixture strength upon the combustion process. When he graduated, a small firm, Messrs Lloyd and Plaister, showed an interest in making the engine. Ricardo produced designs for two different sizes, and the smaller one sold about 50 engines until 1914, when the war halted production.
In 1909 he designed a two-stroke 3.3 litre engine, for his cousin Ralph Ricardo, who had started up a small car manufacturing company, “Two Stroke Engine Company”, at Shoreham-by-Sea
Shoreham-by-Sea
Shoreham-by-Sea is a small town, port and seaside resort in West Sussex, England. Shoreham-by-Sea railway station is located less than a mile from the town centre and London Gatwick Airport is away...
. The engine was to be used in a car called the Dolphin. The cars were well made but it became apparent that they were costing more to make than the selling price. The company had better luck making two-stroke engines for fishing boats. However, in 1911 the firm folded and Ralph left for India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. Ricardo continued to design engines for small electric lighting sets, that were produced by two companies up to 1914.
Tank engines
In 1915 Ricardo set up a new company, “Engine Patents Ltd.”, which developed the engine that would eventually be used in the first successful tankTank
A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...
design, the British Mark V. The Daimler engine used in the Mark I created copious amounts of smoke, which easily gave away its position. Ricardo was asked to look at the problem of reducing smoky exhaust gases and decided that a new engine was needed. Existing companies were able to undertake construction of such an engine but not the design, so Ricardo designed it himself. As well as having reduced smoke emissions, the new engine was much more powerful than the existing ones. The new six-cylinder engine produced 150 h.p., compared with 105 h.p., and later modifications produced 225 h.p. and 260 h.p. By April 1917 one hundred engines were being produced a week. A total of over 8,000 of his tank engines were put into military service, making it the first British-designed engine to be produced in large numbers. The Mark IX
Mark IX tank
The Mark IX tank was a British armoured fighting vehicle from the First World War, the world's first specialised Armoured Personnel Carrier .-Development:...
tank, as well as the British version of the Mark VIII
Mark VIII (tank)
The Tank Mark VIII or Liberty was an Anglo-American tank design of the First World War. Initially intended to be a collaborative effort to equip France, the UK and the US with a single tank design, it did not come to fruition before the end of the war and only a few were produced.-Early...
, also used a Ricardo engine. In addition to being fitted to tanks, several hundred of the 150 h.p. engines were used in France for providing power and light to base workshops, hospitals, camps, etc.
Aircraft engines
In 1917 his old mentor, Bertram HopkinsonBertram Hopkinson
Bertram Hopkinson, CMG, FRS, was a patent lawyer and Professor of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics at Cambridge University. In this position he researched flames, explosions and metallurgy and became a pioneer designer of the internal combustion engine.Hopkinson was born in Birmingham, in 1874, the...
, who was now Technical Director at the Air Ministry
Air Ministry
The Air Ministry was a department of the British Government with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964...
, invited him to join the new engine research facility at the Department of Military Aeronautics, later to become the RAE
Royal Aircraft Establishment
The Royal Aircraft Establishment , was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the UK Ministry of Defence , before finally losing its identity in mergers with other institutions.The first site was at Farnborough...
. In 1918 Hopkinson was killed while flying a Bristol Fighter
Bristol F.2 Fighter
The Bristol F.2 Fighter was a British two-seat biplane fighter and reconnaissance aircraft of the First World War flown by the Royal Flying Corps. It is often simply called the Bristol Fighter or popularly the "Brisfit" or "Biff". Despite being a two-seater, the F.2B proved to be an agile aircraft...
, and Ricardo took over his position. From that point on the department produced a string of experimental engines and research reports that constantly drove the British, and world, engine industry.
One of his first major research projects was on the problems of pre-ignition
Engine knocking
Knocking in spark-ignition internal combustion engines occurs when combustion of the air/fuel mixture in the cylinder starts off correctly in response to ignition by the spark plug, but one or more pockets of air/fuel mixture explode outside the envelope of the normal combustion front.The...
, known as knocking or pinking. To study the problem he built a unique variable-compression
Compression ratio
The 'compression ratio' of an internal-combustion engine or external combustion engine is a value that represents the ratio of the volume of its combustion chamber from its largest capacity to its smallest capacity...
test engine. This led to the development of an octane rating
Octane rating
Octane rating or octane number is a standard measure of the anti-knock properties of a motor or aviation fuel. The higher the octane number, the more compression the fuel can withstand before detonating...
system for fuels, and considerable investment into octane improving additives and refining systems. The dramatic reduction in fuel use as a result of higher-octane fuel was directly responsible for allowing Alcock and Brown
Alcock and Brown
British aviators Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in June 1919. They flew a modified World War I Vickers Vimy bomber from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland...
to fly the Atlantic in their Vickers Vimy
Vickers Vimy
The Vickers Vimy was a British heavy bomber aircraft of the First World War and post-First World War era. It achieved success as both a military and civil aircraft, setting several notable records in long-distance flights in the interwar period, the most celebrated of which was the first non-stop...
bombers adapted with his modifications.
Advances in engine design
In 1919 Ricardo was studying the phenomena affecting the combustion within the petrol engine and the diesel engineDiesel engine
A diesel engine is an internal combustion engine that uses the heat of compression to initiate ignition to burn the fuel, which is injected into the combustion chamber...
. He realised that turbulence
Turbulence
In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is a flow regime characterized by chaotic and stochastic property changes. This includes low momentum diffusion, high momentum convection, and rapid variation of pressure and velocity in space and time...
within the combustion chamber
Combustion chamber
A combustion chamber is the part of an engine in which fuel is burned.-Internal combustion engine:The hot gases produced by the combustion occupy a far greater volume than the original fuel, thus creating an increase in pressure within the limited volume of the chamber...
increased flame speed, and that he could achieve this by offsetting the cylinder head
Cylinder head
In an internal combustion engine, the cylinder head sits above the cylinders on top of the cylinder block. It closes in the top of the cylinder, forming the combustion chamber. This joint is sealed by a head gasket...
. He also realised that making the chamber as compact as possible would reduce the distance that the flame had to travel and would reduce the likelihood of detonation. He later developed the induction swirl chamber, which was an attempt to achieve orderly air motion in a diesel engine, the swirl being initiated by inclined ports
Inlet manifold
In automotive engineering, an inlet manifold or intake manifold is the part of an engine that supplies the fuel/air mixture to the cylinders...
and accentuated by forcing the air into a small cylindrical volume. Finally he developed the compression swirl chamber for diesel engines. This design embodied intense swirl with a reasonable rate of pressure rise and good fuel consumption.
The compression swirl chamber design was called a “Comet” design and was subsequently licensed to a large number of companies for use in trucks, buses, tractors and cranes, as well as private cars and taxis. A Comet combustion chamber was used in the first Associated Equipment Company (AEC) diesel buses operated in 1931 by London Transport
London Passenger Transport Board
The London Passenger Transport Board was the organisation responsible for public transport in London, UK, and its environs from 1933 to 1948...
. A later development of it featured in the world's first volume production diesel passenger car, the 1933 Citroën Rosalie
Citroën Rosalie
The original Citroën Rosalie was a light-weight racing car that established a succession of records at the Montlhéry racing circuit. More generally the Rosalie was a range of three models/sizes of automobile that comprised the core of Citroën's model range between 1932 and 1938...
. This meant that Britain led the world in the field of high-speed diesels for road transport at that time. This advantage was lost to the continent as a result of the heavy tax imposed on diesel fuel in the budget of 1938.
Ricardo designed the 1921 T.T. Vauxhall engine which was described by Cecil Clutton in Motor Sport as a tour de force. Later developed by Mays
Raymond Mays
Thomas Raymond Mays CBE was an auto racing driver and entrepreneur from Bourne, Lincolnshire, England.He attended Oundle School, where he met Amherst Villiers, leaving at the end of 1917. After army service in the Grenadier Guards in France, he attended Christ's College, Cambridge...
and Villiers
Amherst Villiers
Amherst Villiers was an English automotive, aeronautical and astronautic engineer and portrait painter.He designed a land speed record-breaking car for Malcolm Campbell, and developed the supercharged "Blower Bentley", driven by Henry Birkin and by James Bond.-Early life:Charles Amherst Villiers...
, who fitted a supercharger, the engine was still a winner fifteen years later.
In 1922 and 1923 Ricardo published a two-volume work “The Internal Combustion Engine.”
In 1927 he formed Ricardo Consulting Engineers in Shoreham-by-Sea
Shoreham-by-Sea
Shoreham-by-Sea is a small town, port and seaside resort in West Sussex, England. Shoreham-by-Sea railway station is located less than a mile from the town centre and London Gatwick Airport is away...
, which has become one of the foremost automotive consulting firms worldwide and is publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
.
Although Ricardo did not invent the sleeve valve
Sleeve valve
The sleeve valve is a type of valve mechanism for piston engines, distinct from the usual poppet valve. Sleeve-valve engines saw use in a number of pre-World War II luxury cars and in USA in the Willys-Knight car and light truck...
, in 1927, he produced a seminal research paper that outlined the advantages of the sleeve valve
Sleeve valve
The sleeve valve is a type of valve mechanism for piston engines, distinct from the usual poppet valve. Sleeve-valve engines saw use in a number of pre-World War II luxury cars and in USA in the Willys-Knight car and light truck...
, and suggested that poppet valve
Poppet valve
A poppet valve is a valve consisting of a hole, usually round or oval, and a tapered plug, usually a disk shape on the end of a shaft also called a valve stem. The shaft guides the plug portion by sliding through a valve guide...
engines would not be able to offer power outputs much beyond 1500 hp (1,100 kW). A number of sleeve valve aircraft engines were developed following this paper, notably by Napier
Napier Lion
The Napier Lion was a 12-cylinder broad arrow configuration aircraft engine built by Napier & Son starting in 1917, and ending in the 1930s. A number of advanced features made it the most powerful engine of its day, and kept it in production long after contemporary designs had stopped production...
, Bristol
Bristol Aeroplane Company
The Bristol Aeroplane Company, originally the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company, was both one of the first and one of the most important British aviation companies, designing and manufacturing both airframes and aero engines...
and Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce Limited
Rolls-Royce Limited was a renowned British car and, from 1914 on, aero-engine manufacturing company founded by Charles Stewart Rolls and Henry Royce on 15 March 1906 as the result of a partnership formed in 1904....
. Bristol produced the Perseus
Bristol Perseus
|-See also:-Bibliography:* Bridgman, L, Jane's Fighting Aircraft of World War II. Crescent . ISBN 0-517-67964-7* Gunston, Bill. World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines. Cambridge, England. Patrick Stephens Limited, 1989. ISBN 1-85260-163-9...
, Hercules
Bristol Hercules
|-See also:-Bibliography:*Gunston, B. Classic World War II Aircraft Cutaways. Osprey. ISBN 1-85532-526-8*Gunston, Bill. World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines. Cambridge, England. Patrick Stephens Limited, 1989. ISBN 1-85260-163-9...
, Taurus
Bristol Taurus
|-See also:-Bibliography:*Gunston, Bill. World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines. Cambridge, England. Patrick Stephens Limited, 1989. ISBN 1-85260-163-9...
and the Centaurus
Bristol Centaurus
|-See also:-Bibliography:*Bridgman, L, Jane's Fighting Aircraft of World War II. Crescent. ISBN 0-517-67964-7*Gunston, Bill. Development of Piston Aero Engines. Cambridge, England. Patrick Stephens Limited, 2006. ISBN 0-7509-4478-1...
, Napier produced the Napier Sabre
Napier Sabre
The Napier Sabre was a British H-24-cylinder, liquid cooled, sleeve valve, piston aero engine, designed by Major Frank Halford and built by Napier & Son during WWII...
, and Rolls-Royce produced the Eagle and Crecy
Rolls-Royce Crecy
The Rolls-Royce Crecy was an unusual British experimental two-stroke, 90-degree, V12, liquid-cooled aero-engine of 1,536 cu.in capacity, featuring sleeve valves and direct petrol injection...
, all using sleeve valves.
In 1929 Ricardo was elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
World War II
Ricardo’s work on the sleeve valve affected the development of British aircraft engines in the thirties and during the war. He even enhanced the famous Rolls-Royce MerlinRolls-Royce Merlin
The Rolls-Royce Merlin is a British liquid-cooled, V-12, piston aero engine, of 27-litre capacity. Rolls-Royce Limited designed and built the engine which was initially known as the PV-12: the PV-12 became known as the Merlin following the company convention of naming its piston aero engines after...
engine in the Mosquito
De Havilland Mosquito
The de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito was a British multi-role combat aircraft that served during the Second World War and the postwar era. It was known affectionately as the "Mossie" to its crews and was also nicknamed "The Wooden Wonder"...
by giving it an oxygen enrichment system to improve its performance.
Ricardo's work exerted influence all around the world. While his work guaranteed England a supply of fuels of ever-increasing power during the 1930s, it also helped Germany to develop synthetic high-octane aviation fuel, for example for the Focke-Wulf Fw 190
Focke-Wulf Fw 190
The Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Würger was a German Second World War single-seat, single-engine fighter aircraft designed by Kurt Tank in the late 1930s. Powered by a radial engine, the 190 had ample power and was able to lift larger loads than its well-known counterpart, the Messerschmitt Bf 109...
which inflicted heavy losses among the RAF's Supermarine Spitfire
Supermarine Spitfire
The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft that was used by the Royal Air Force and many other Allied countries throughout the Second World War. The Spitfire continued to be used as a front line fighter and in secondary roles into the 1950s...
s in 1942. Likewise, Ricardo's research on the detonation-inhibiting qualities of water injection
Water injection (engines)
In internal combustion engines, water injection, also known as anti-detonant injection, is spraying water into the cylinder or incoming fuel-air mixture to cool the combustion chambers of the engine, allowing for greater compression ratios and largely eliminating the problem of engine knocking...
was exploited by German engineers (MW 50
MW 50
MW 50 was a 50-50 mixture of methanol and water that was often sprayed into the supercharger of World War II aircraft engines primarily for its anti-detonant effect, allowing the use of increased boost pressures.Secondary effects were cooling of the engine and charge cooling...
) to provide their aero-engines with a particularly powerful special emergency power rating.
During 1941-5 Ricardo was a member of the War Cabinet engineering advisory committee.
Ricardo also assisted in the design of the combustion chambers and fuel control system of Sir Frank Whittle
Frank Whittle
Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, Hon FRAeS was a British Royal Air Force engineer officer. He is credited with independently inventing the turbojet engine Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, Hon FRAeS (1 June 1907 – 9 August 1996) was a British Royal Air...
’s jet engine.
Post war period
In 1944 Ricardo was elected president of the Institution of Mechanical EngineersInstitution of Mechanical Engineers
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers is the British engineering society based in central London, representing mechanical engineering. It is licensed by the Engineering Council UK to assess candidates for inclusion on ECUK's Register of professional Engineers...
. In 1945 he and his wife moved from Shoreham-by-Sea to Graffham
Graffham
Graffham is a village and civil parish in West Sussex, England, situated on the northern escarpment of the South Downs. It is made up of the village of Graffham and the hamlet of Selham...
, also in West Sussex
West Sussex
West Sussex is a county in the south of England, bordering onto East Sussex , Hampshire and Surrey. The county of Sussex has been divided into East and West since the 12th century, and obtained separate county councils in 1888, but it remained a single ceremonial county until 1974 and the coming...
. In 1948 Ricardo was knighted in recognition for his work in the field of internal combustion engineering.
In 1964 Ricardo retired from active work in Ricardo Consulting Engineers but kept in touch with various engineers within the company.
In 1974, at the age of 89, Ricardo broke his leg in a fall. He died six weeks later, on 18 May.
Blue plaque
A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person or event, serving as a historical marker....
was placed outside the house where he was born in Bedford Square
Bedford Square
Bedford Square is a square in the Bloomsbury district of the Borough of Camden in London, England.Built between 1775 and 1783 as an upper middle class residential area, the sqare has had many distinguished residents, including Lord Eldon, one of Britain's longest serving and most celebrated Lord...
, London. On 1 July 2010, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers bestowed an Engineering Heritage Award on Sir Harry Ricardo in recognition of his life and work as one of the foremost engineers of the twentieth century.
Ricardo Consulting
During the 1960s a second round of development of the Comet system was started, now armed with considerably more powerful test apparatus. The refined design was immediately used in several cars, and the pre-combustion system remains in use in most diesel engines today. Ricardo Consulting remains committed to the diesel, considering it to be nowhere near its development potential even in the most advanced of today's engines.In 1978 the US Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
hired Ricardo Consulting to research the Stirling engine
Stirling engine
A Stirling engine is a heat engine operating by cyclic compression and expansion of air or other gas, the working fluid, at different temperature levels such that there is a net conversion of heat energy to mechanical work....
as a car engine. A series of engines, eventually forty-five in total, were built to test this system and showed very low emissions, but the efficiency was compromised by the need to operate under transient conditions—the design was best running at a single speed, making it less than useful as a car engine. The Stirling may make an excellent engine for (particularly series) hybrid cars and has recently generated some interest in this role.
In 1986, the Voyager was the first aircraft to fly around the world non-stop and without refuelling. Ricardo Consulting redesigned the otherwise "stock" Teledyne Continental engine to incorporate a highly efficient combustion system and water cooling, thereby dramatically reducing drag and improving fuel economy.
Ricardo worked on petrol (or gasoline) engines throughout his career, including pioneering work on direct injection gasoline engines for aircraft engines in the 1930s, but his best-known work was in the development of high-speed diesel engines for cars. He was responsible for designing the combustion-chambers for the first two diesel car engines produced in quantity — the Citroën Rosalie and Mercedes-Benz 260D — in the mid-thirties. Later, various versions of Ricardo's Comet pre-combustion chamber for car diesels were deployed in countless engines over four decades, and the Comet remains one of Ricardo's best-known personal achievements in automobile engineering.
Today several stratified charge engine
Stratified charge engine
In a stratified charge engine, the fuel is injected into the cylinder just before ignition. This allows for higher compression ratios without "knock," and leaner air/fuel mixtures than in conventional internal combustion engines....
s are in use in the automobile market. Stratified charge is a technology that has come of age relatively recently, as a result of advances in manufacturing and electronics, but it was a feature of the first engine that Harry Ricardo built, while still in his teens, in the early years of the 20th century.
See also
- British Rail 10100British Rail 10100British Railways 10100 was an unusual experimental diesel locomotive known informally as The Fell Diesel Locomotive . It was the joint production of Davey Paxman & Co, Shell Refining & Marketing Co and Lt-Col L.F.R. Fell, built for them by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway at Derby. Sir...
- Ricardo Consulting Engineers
- Triumph Slant-4 engineTriumph Slant-4 engineThe Triumph Slant-4 is an engine developed by Triumph. According to Triumph historians Graham Robson and Richard Langworth in Triumph Cars, the complete story, the engine was developed in-house by a design team led by Lewis Dawtry and Harry Webster....
- Triumph RicardoTriumph RicardoThe Triumph Ricardo was a British single-cylinder motorcycle manufactured by the Triumph Engineering Co Ltd between 1921 and 1928. Named after engine designer Sir Harry Ricardo it featured an innovative four valve head design and was capable of over 70 mph, set three world speed records and...
- Francis Rodwell BanksFrancis Rodwell BanksAir Commodore Francis Rodwell "Rod" Banks, RAF , CB., OBE., Commander of Legion of Honour , Commander of the Legion of Merit , Military Order of St. Stanislaus , Hon. CGIA., Hon. FRAeS, Hon...