Wet and Dry Sump Systems
Conventional wet sump engines have one oil pump. It is generally located inside the lower part of the engine, usually below and/or to one side of the crankshaft. On dry sump engines, at least two oil pumps are required: one to pressurize and distribute the oil around the engine components, and at least one other 'scavenge pump' to evacuate the oil which has pooled at the bottom of the engine. This scavenge pump is sometimes (but not always) located in the 'sump' of the engine, and crucially, this scavenge pump's flow-rate capacity must exceed that of the pump which pressurizes and distributes oil throughout the engine.
Because of the dry sump's external oil reservoir, excess air can escape the oil before the oil is pumped back through the engine. Dry sumps also allow for more power because it reduces the amount of windage, oil sloshing up into the rotating assembly, and the vacuum from the scavenge pump improves ring seal. Dry sumps are more popular in racing applications because of the improved power and reduced oil sloshing that would otherwise reduce oil pressure. Disadvantages of dry sumps are increased weight, additional parts, and more chances for leaks and problems to occur.
Read more about this topic: Oil Pump (internal Combustion Engine)
Famous quotes containing the words wet and, wet, dry, sump and/or systems:
“The property of rain is to wet and fire to burn.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“A too-fluent green
Suggested malice in the dry machine
Of ocean, pondering dank stratagem.
Who then beheld the figures of the clouds
Like blooms secluded in the thick marine?”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)