Question 7

Racing engines often fail at high rotational speeds because mechanical springs are unable to
retract the valves quickly enough to provide clearance for the piston. Renault's pneumatic
valve technology replaced steel springs with light weight compressed air bellows. These
could retract valves more quickly and reduce the possibility of piston-valve interference, as
long as pressure could be maintained. The actuation mechanism is simply a piston and
cylinder.

Consider a piston-cylinder device which contains 0.15 kg of air. The air undergoes a cycle
with three processes.

Air
2 MPa

Calculate:
i. the work done during Process 1,2, which is isothermal expansion at 350oC from
2000kPa to 500kPa,
ii. the work done during Process 2,3, which is polytropic compression process from
500kPa to 2000kPa

Where p2 V 1.2 1.2

2 = p3 V 3 and

iii. the work done during Process 3,1, which is a constant pressure process at 2000kPa to
the original volume.
iv. the net work done during the cycle.

The properties of air are R = 0.287 kJ/kg.K , γ = 1.4

You may assume for a closed system with fixed mass that Pv = mRT, and

that work during an isothermal process 1,2 is given by, and W 1 , 2= p1 V 1 ( )

V2
V1

p 3 V 3− p 2 V 2
that work done during a polytropic process 2,3 is given by, and W 2 , 3=
n−1

that work done during a constant pressure process 3,1 is given by W 3 , 1= p3 ( V 1−V 3 )

Where;
P is pressure in Pa
V is volume in m3,
 T is in Kelvin, and
n is the polytropic index.
[5 marks]
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Question 8

An air-cooling system comprises of a reciprocating compressor and during the compression

process a refrigerant gas is compressed. The cylinder is initially at a volume of 0.05 m 3,
contains 0.1 kg of ammonia at a pressure of 3 bar. The gas is subjected to a reversible
adiabatic compression process to a final volume of 0.01 m 3. Assuming the ammonia to be a
perfect gas, calculate:

Its initial temperature, pressure at the end of the compression stroke and the work done in
compressing the ammonia.

For ammonia: R = 530 J/kgK and cv = 166 J/kgK.

[5 marks]
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Question 9

Pneumatic systems, also known as vacuum or pressure systems, power many functions which
are important to racing cars. Consider a simple system where a gas cylinder is used to absorb
some energy in the pneumatic control of a damper. The system consists of 300 g of gas in a
sealed cylinder with the pneumatic piston initially at a temperature of 20 oC. During closing
of a damper piston it is moved with a mean force of 1 kN and is displaced by 300mm to
compress the gas. As a result the temperature of the gas rises by 15 oC.
Calculate the heat transfer from the piston given Cv = 0.718kJ/kg.K
[5 marks]
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