The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C - WORLD'S LARGEST DIESEL ENGINE

Maximum power: 108,920 hp at 102 rpm

Maximum torque: 5,608,312 lb/ft at 102rpm

The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine is the most powerful and most efficient prime-mover in the world today. The Aioi Works of Japan 's Diesel United, Ltd built the first engines and is where some of these pictures were taken. It is available in 6 through 14 cylinder versions, all are inline engines. These engines were designed primarily for very large container ships. Ship owners like a single engine/single propeller design and the new generation of larger container ships needed a bigger engine to propel them. The cylinder bore is just under 38" and the stroke is just over 98". Each cylinder displaces 111,143 cubic inches (1820 liters) and produces 7780 horsepower. Total displacement comes out to 1,556,002 cubic inches (25,480 liters) for the fourteen cylinder version. 

Some facts on the 14 cylinder version:

   

Total engine weight: 2300 tons (The crankshaft alone weighs 300 tons.)

Length: 89 feet

Height: 44 feet

Maximum power: 108,920 hp at 102 rpm

Maximum torque: 5,608,312 lb/ft at 102rpm

Fuel consumption at maximum power is 0.278 lbs per hp per hour (Brake Specific Fuel Consumption). Fuel consumption at maximum economy is 0.260 lbs/hp/hour. At maximum economy the engine exceeds 50% thermal efficiency. That is, more than 50% of the energy in the fuel in converted to motion.

For comparison, most automotive and small aircraft engines have BSFC figures in the 0.40-0.60 lbs/hp/hr range and 25-30% thermal efficiency range.

Even at its most efficient power setting, the big 14 consumes 1,660 gallons of heavy fuel oil per hour.

A cross section of the RTA96C:

The internals of this engine are a bit different than most automotive engines.

The top of the connecting rod is not attached directly to the piston. The top of the connecting rod attaches to a "crosshead" which rides in guide channels. A long piston rod then connects the crosshead to the piston.

I assume this is done so the the sideways forces produced by the connecting rod are absorbed by the crosshead and not by the piston. Those sideways forces are what makes the cylinders in an auto engine get oval-shaped over time.

Installing the "thin-shell" bearings. Crank & rod journals are 38" in diameter and 16" wide:

The crank sitting in the block (also known as a "gondola-style" bedplate). This is a 10 cylinder version. Note the steps by each crank throw that lead down into the crankcase:

A piston & piston rod assembly. The piston is at the top. The large square plate at the bottom is where the whole assembly attaches to the crosshead:

Some pistons:

And some piston rods:

The "spikes" on the piston rods are hollow tubes that go into the holes you can see on the bottom of the pistons (left picture) and inject oil into the inside of the piston which keeps the top of the piston from overheating. Some high-performance auto engines have a similar feature where an oil squirter nozzle squirts oil onto the bottom of the piston.

The cylinder deck (10 cylinder version). Cylinder liners are die-cast ductile cast iron. Look at the size of those head studs!

The first completed 12 cylinder engine: 

World's 10 largest nuclear power plants

Work to start up the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu resumed after police arrested dozens of protesters who had blocked access to the site for months, in a breakthrough for the power-short emerging economy. 

Twenty-four years in the making, the Russian-built plant was supposed to be switched on last year, but protesters surrounded it after the nuclear accident in Japan. The Kudankulam project will initially provide 2 gigawatts of electricity - enough to power 20 million homes. This will be one of the largest N-power plants in India. So which are the world's ten largest nuclear power plants? Find out...

The Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu will be one of the largest N-power plants in India. So which are the world's ten largest nuclear power plants? Find out:

1) Cattenom nuclear power station is located in Lorraine in the Cattenom commune in France. The plant consists of 4 pressurized water reactors with an electric output of 1300 megawatt from each reactor. The plant became operational in 1986 and is run by Électricité de France and employs over 1200 employees.

2) Gravelines nuclear power station: Located in Nord, France the Gravelines nuclear power station and uses six nuclear plants. The plant became the first of its kind to generate over one thousand terawatt hours of electricity. The cooling water from the plant that carries waste heat is used by local fish farmers to help raise seabass, gilt-head breams and other fish.

3) The Yonggwang nuclear power plant has six nuclear reactors and is operated by Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Company. The plant became operational in 1978. Situated in Jeollanam-do province of South Korea, the power plant produces over 5400 megawatts of power.

4) The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant is located in 170 miles north of Tokyo, Japan. The plant became operational in 1971 but was badly damaged in the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011. Managed by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant was the world's tenth largest nuclear power plant.

5) The Bruce nuclear generating station is situated in Ontario, Canada. The plant has eight nuclear plants out of which only six are operational. The Bruce station is the largest nuclear facility in North America and employs over 3800 employees. The current output with 6 of the 8 reactors is 4,640 megawatt.

6) Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is the largest nuclear power generating station in the world. Situated in towns of Kashiwazaki and Kariwa in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, the plant covers 4.2-square-kilometer and is operated by The Tokyo Electric Power Company. The plant was built in 1985 but all seven reactors were operational in 1997. The plant was shut down for 21 months after radioactive leaks were discovered following an earthquake in 2007.

7) Paluel Nuclear Plant: Situated in the French town Paluel in Normandy, the nuclear power station consists of four reactors that generates over 1330 megawatts of power per hour and employs over 1200 workers. The plant generates 32 billion kilowatt-hours of energy every year. The plant became operational in 1984 and is run by Électricité de France.

8) Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station: Situated in Enerhodar, Ukraine, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station is the largest in Europe and produces over half of the country's nuclear energy. The plant has six VVER pressurized light water nuclear reactors, each generating 1000 MWe. The plant became operational in 1985 and is operated by Energoatom.

9) The Oi nuclear power plant is located in Fukui Prefecture, Japan and is operated by Kansai Electric Power Company. The plant is spread across 1.88 square kilometers and has four nuclear reactors which generate over 1000 megawatt of power per hour.

10) Uljin nuclear power plant: Situated in the Gyeongsangbuk-do province of South Korea, the Uljin nuclear power plant has been built to withstand 6.5 magnitude earthquakes. The plant is fortified by walls to protect it from a 10-meter-high tsunami. There is one 942 MW unit, one 945 MW unit, one 994 MW unit, one 998 MW unit, and two 1,001 MW units. Unit-1 was commissioned in 1988, Unit-2 in 1989, Unit-3 and Unit-4 in 1998, Unit-5 in 2003, and Unit-6 in 2005.

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11 best features of OS X Mountain Lion

Apple released a preview version of its new Macintosh operating system on Thursday, bringing some features of the iPad to the personal computer.

The Cupertino, California-based company said the updated operating system, called Mountain Lion, will be available to Macintosh developers immediately and Mac owners can upgrade to the new software in late summer.

Some of the highlighted features of the upcoming OS X Mountain Lion are -

1) Messages:

Messages is a little like iChat, but it lets you send messages to iOS devices via iMessage, and if you have Mac OS X 10.7.3 on your computer, you can actually start using the Messages beta today. Just download it, install it, and start keeping your messages in sync across all your Apple devices.

2) Reminders:

Reminders is a new dedicated app in Mountain Lion that looks just like the iOS 5 app. A relatively bare-bones app, it lets you record reminders, to-do lists, grocery lists, and the like. You can set a reminder date, change priorities, shuttle information within lists, and sort tasks by date. Reminders seamlessly syncs between iOS, Google, and Yahoo Calendar, as well as the other OSX apps. This is a straightforward program, but once used, if you lose the capability you will miss it.

3) Notes:

All operating systems for personal computing have some form of note-taking app, however crude. Apple has again lifted their Notes app directly from another Apple product, this time the iPad Notes app.

Using Notes in OSX is straightforward - a click opens a note, while a double click opens a note in a standalone window which stays open even when you quit Notes. The standalone window can be set to stay on top of the screen stack.

Notes has flexible formatting choices, and also allows you to insert inline images and links. Your notes sync automatically with iCloud, and Notes can also be set up to also sync with Gmail, Yahoo, and other services that support notes.

4) Notifications:

It took what seemed like a lifetime to get a Notification Center onto iOS, and now here comes one for OS X Mountain Lion as well. It will work in a similar manner to its mobile counterpart with notifications being linked to their corresponding application: Click on it, the app opens and you can take care of whatever it is you need to look at. The notifications are said to only appear on screen for a brief time to minimize how much they intrude on whatever else you may be doing.

4) Twitter Integration:

Apple has integrated Twitter into OS X Mountain Lion, the next-generation operating system for Macs announced Thursday and slated for summer release. The decision has profound implications for Twitter and will, should recent history repeat itself, help it dramatically increase signups and tweet volume across the world.

Twitter will be baked into the new Mac operating system in much the same way that is weaved into the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad experience today.

After signing into Twitter once, members can tweet links, photos, and content from the share button built into Apple’s Safari, Notes, Reminders, Photo Booth, and iPhone apps, and from third-party apps that update to support the integration. Twitterers will also receive notifications for Twitter mentions and direct messages on the desktop, and notifications will appear in the new Mountain Lion Notification Center.

5) iCloud integration

One of the major new features in OS X Mountain Lion is greater integration with iCloud, with one of the additions being new Documents in the Cloud functionality. As noted by John Gruber, the feature expands significantly on the existing feature that allows limited syncing and transfer of iWork documents across their iOS devices and Macs.

Apple is of course already extending this functionality beyond iWork in OS X Mountain Lion, with the iCloud file storage showing up in other apps such as TextEdit. Apple is also releasing APIs to allow third-party apps to take advantage of the feature.

The functionality is naturally being compared to that of Dropbox, which allows users to save files directly to their Dropbox accounts for access anywhere, but Apple's new iCloud solution offers the advantage of displaying only those files intended for use with the app being used, helping to filter the list of documents and offering iOS-like folder organization of files.

6) Game Center:

The true purpose of most computers is, of course, testing one's skills in any one of a number of directions by playing games.

Apple reports that their social gaming network has over 100 million registered users who are provided with access to some 20,000 Game Center-enabled games. This community is only expected to grow now that the MacBook is getting Game Center support. MacBook gamers will now be able to find new games and challenge friends to play live multiplayer games, whether they're on a Mac, iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

With the Game Kit APIs tapping into the same services as Game Center on iOS, developers will be able to create multiplayer games that work across Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Expect mass porting of iOS games to Mountain Lion this year.

7) Share Sheets:

Apple deeply integrated Twitter tools into iOS 5, and now it’s carrying that thinking over to Mac OS X. While Twitter won’t be the only sharing tool getting some love in the new “Share Sheets,” you will find lots of ways to share information in just about every Mac OS X Mountain Lion app. You can post images to Flickr, send videos to Vimeo or share Web pages from Safari with ease from here on out.

8) AirPlay Mirroring:

Connecting your computer to a TV has been a nightmare in the past, usually involving a mess of cables. iOS 5 simplified that process for those who use Apple’s mobile devices, and now it’s coming to the Macs as well. You’ll now be able to project your computer’s desktop to a TV connected to an Apple TV and you’re off to the races. Whether it be wanting to use a gigantic monitor, showing a presentation in Keynote or sharing a family vacation video, a lot of the work will now be removed from getting that content and information to the TV screen.

9) Unified software update into Mac App Store:

Where one would normally hit “Software Update” from the Apple logo to update their machine with bug fixes, software updates, and even entire operating systems, the Mac App Store will become the central hub to all necessary updates.

The Mac App Store, introduced when the recently announced operating system’s predecessor ‘Lion’ was first thrust into the media limelight, was reserved for Apple products and third-party developer applications. It was in effect what iTunes was for music, but for applications and games.

10) Gatekeeper:

OS X, like most of the Mac operating systems, has a reputation for being resistant to malware, viruses, worms, Trojans, backdoors, keyloggers, and the like. This resistance is partly due to program security, and partly due to the limited use of OS X compared to larger-scale targets - ie. Windows. However, Apple does take security concerns seriously. In adding Gatekeeper to Mountain Lion, Apple allows users to restrict the downloading and executing of unvetted apps.

There are three levels of security. The strongest is to allow access only to apps obtained from the Mac App Store. The next level limits access to the Mac App Store and the apps of vetted developers. The lowest level is essentially no added security, allowing apps to be downloaded from anywhere. Gatekeeper is still being tweaked to make it easy for users to understand and use without simply accepting the default settings.

What (or who) is a vetted developer? Called an "identified" developer by Apple, such a person simply has to sign up as a Mac app developer and pay a fee of US$99 per year. The apps of an identified developer are not screened or tested by Apple, so the additional security amounts to knowing that Apple will pull the credentials of a developer who issues bad apps,

Will Apple do this on the first bad app? Will they require a pattern of bad apps? Will requirements differ for major app developers as compared to a one-off developer? These and other questions concerning how Apple will control Gatekeeper's access to apps are somewhat controversial, and will in the end determine if Gatekeeper is a benefit or a detriment to OSX.

Other new features in OSX Mountain Lion include a Chinese language GUI, a search/URL bar for internet searches, similar to that found in Google Chrome, a VIP mail area for your favorite contacts, similar to Priority Inbox in Gmail, and a Re-open windows setting for Shutdown and Restart commands.

The operating speed of Lion and Mountain Lion are reported to be equivalent, but startup and shutdown speeds of Mountain Lion are currently considerably slower than those of Lion. This difference may reflect the beta status of Mountain Lion. Battery life is the same with the two OSX versions.

In summary, Mountain Lion is an incremental evolution of Lion, rather than an OS as different as Windows 8 will be compared to Windows 7. Apple has shipped some 20 million copies of Lion, many of which will probably be upgraded in turn to Mountain Lion, at a very low price point.

Samsung Galaxy Skin Flexible AMOLED Display Concept Phone

Samsung Galaxy Skin Flexible AMOLED Display Concept Phone

You are the designer Heyon is challenged to create a concept of flexible and ultra-thin smartphone: Samsung Galaxy skin. The particularity of this project is the latest generation represented by the use of special materials that make the terminal fully flexible and thin as a sheet of paper. The concept, called Samsung Galaxy skin, can fold into two or four parts as needed or being used as a video projector.

A recent survey conducted by Nielsen reveals that a great percentage of mobile customers in the United States are owners of smartphones and also that smartphones are responsible for the majority of purchases of new cell phone.

Smartphone is a gadget that has classified the convenience of a tiny computer that can be easily taken anywhere. With smartphones increasing becoming a trend around the globe, iPhones along with Android phones are now components of many households.

A few months after, Samsung confirmed the manufacture of the AMOLED displays which are flexible and set to be debuted by June 2012. At the Consumer Electronics Show 2011 in Las Vegas, Samsung showed off its AMOLED displays. The displays are bendable, can be rolled all the way up and they can even withstand direct hits from a hammer.

The concept for this new mobile phone leaps ahead of the smartphone era to usher in the era of the “Genius Phone.”So, we’ve seen dual-core processors in phones, Massive screen sizes that are too big to fit in your pocket and we’ve even explored the third dimension with phones like the Optimus 3D and Evo 3D. Where do we go from here? How about flexible displays then. Samsung showed off their concept phone, called the ‘Skin’ in South Korea in June and earlier, at CES 2011. The phone uses a special flexible AMOLED screen instead of glass that uses a plastic polyimide substrate. Due to this, the display is flexible enough to bend around a cylinder measuring just an inch in diameter

In the place of a glass display, the AMOLED flexible one utilizes a polyimide substrate made from plastic. Research has revealed that by using plastic polyimide in place of glass, the flexible displays will have the capacity to wrap around a 1-inch cylinder. The flexible display receives electrical signals which result in physical deformation; which is the polymer core technology that is electrically active. One of the best features of the flexible displays is that they make use of AMOLED technology, which means that they are equipped with low energy consumption and bright screens. Furthermore, Samsung has joined forces with Ube Kosan, a company in Japan, which will most likely play a vital role in manufacture of the AMOLED flexible displays.

Samsung Galaxy skins Images:

Glass Mobile Phone: Concept

Glass Mobile Phone: CONCEPT

As the market of mobile phone is expanding at large pace every day we will be able to see latest mobile phones are coming to the market with different qualities, features and specification. To be different from earlier models all latest mobile phones have some new and unique features which makes them different from others.

Some latest mobile phones are concentrating on camera than some concentrate on other multimedia option but this new mobile phone as Glass Mobile phone is concentrating on weather conditions. If you want to know the weather of your city than this new mobile phone have unique feature to display the weather on it own screen.
If this will be sunny day than this glass mobile phone will display as clear screen, if its rainy than screen will change into drops format and if its snow that this phone will have fog kind of look.
If you want to activate hand writing option in this glass mobile phone than simply blow your breath and mode of this latest mobile phone will shift to hand writing mode.
Although this is still a concept phone but you never know when a concept phone can turned into reality or latest mobile phones.

Android Ice Cream Sandwich

                              Android Ice Cream Sandwich

The number of Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich is growing slowly, but the latest version of Google's mobile OS is still only available on 1.12 percent of Android-based gadgets.

Mobile ad network Chitika examined the number of impressions it received in recent days and found that the most popular version of Android remains Gingerbread at 66.29 percent, followed by Froyo at 22.33 percent, and Eclair at 5.39 percent.

The tablet-centric Honeycomb captured 3.3 percent of the market, but Ice Cream Sandwich was, well, sandwiched between the oldest versions of Android: Donut with 0.63 percent and Cupcake at 0.95 percent.

The fragmentation issue comes up every time Google releases an updated version of Android. Given that so many manufacturers produce Android-based handsets and many carriers in turn pick up those devices, the timing for when a given phone will get a certain Android update varies wildly.

"This inherent diversity of products may make Android's strength perpetually its weakness," Chitika said. "It has taken steps to overcome it, but if these steps will ever be enough to get past the variegation built into such an open system is something we will have to see in time."

Google stats released in January found that approximately 0.6 percent of Android phones were running Ice Cream Sandwich, about 55 percent were running its predecessor, Gingerbread, and 30.4 percent were on Froyo.

As of Feb. 1, Google's developer site said 1 percent of devices were on Ice Cream Sandwich, 58.6 percent were on Gingerbread, and 27.8 percent were on Froyo.

The low numbers for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich shouldn't be entirely shocking. At this point, the mobile OS is only available on a handful of smartphones and tablets, like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Asus Transformer Prime, and Motorola Xoom. Other manufacturers have promised ICS upgrades for their devices, but that will happen on a staggered basis throughout 2012.

Last month, former Windows Phone exec Charles Kindel said Google has lost control of Android thanks to fragmentation, but predicted the OS will continue to thrive for many years to come.

Kindel's comments came one week after Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt appeared at the Consumer Electronics Show and argued that Android is not fragmented but "differentiated," which Kindel said was pure spin.

Check out the slideshow below:

Ice Cream Sandwich Home

The new version of Android, 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich," combines elements from Google's phone and tablet versions with brand-new features and UI ideas. Let's take a look.

ICS Customization

ICS has five scrolling home screens, but the applications at the bottom stay put. Now, they're customizable so you can pick your four favorite apps to always have available.

ICS Folder

You can create folders of apps by stacking icons, just like on the iPhone.

ICS Multitasking

ICS uses the multitasking display from Google's Honeycomb tablets, a vertical array of thumbnails of the most recent apps you've used.

ICS App Tray

The Ice Cream Sandwich app tray looks similar to previous Android versions, with the addition of the "Widgets" tab.

ICS Widgets

The Widgets tab, like the one in Honeycomb, lets you add large or complex live widgets to your home screens.

ICS Data Usage

One terrific new feature in Ice Cream Sandwich lets you see how much cellular data you've used, and which apps have been using it.

ICS Bookmarks

The browser has gotten a refit for Ice Cream Sandwich. You can save pages for offline viewing, and the browser opens up to this attractive list of graphical bookmarks.

ICS Browser Options

New browser options include an easy way to get rid of those hideous "mobile sites." The menu button on previous Android phones has been replaced by a virtual menu button, three vertical dots.

ICS Contacts

Ice Cream Sandwich merges Google and Twitter contacts, showing Twitter updates in the contact book, but it doesn't support Facebook.

ICS Contact Card

Something about these contact cards—the bleed on the upper half—reminds me a little of Windows Phone 7.

ICS Call Options

You can block callers by tagging them as "send all calls to voicemail" on their contact cards.

ICS Gmail

Gmail is still at the core of the Android experience; here's ICS's Gmail client.

ICS Mail Message

Emails look great; they support HTML and inline images

ICS App

New icons in the Android Market give app buyers guidance by telling them which apps are prominent and popular.

ICS Music

There are plenty of changes in the Music app, including a full graphic equalizer and these cool litle VU meters when you're playing a song.

ICS Gallery

The Ice Cream Sandwich gallery app goes for a very tight tiled look.

ICS Voice Control

Ice Cream Sandwich has very flexible and powerful voice input, but it has some trouble with names.

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