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Prefabricating TEE SLOT

24th December 1948
Page 40
Page 40, 24th December 1948 — Prefabricating TEE SLOT
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Engine Test Beds

AT the end of the war, many factories were faced with the problem of changing over parts of their premises to different classes of work, some of the conversion programmes demanding additional test beds to accommodate engines up to 150 b.h.p. These were required as soon as possible, so that research could be continued, and production engines tested fully.

The traditional form of engine test bed was probably out of the question, because of the necessity of heavy iron castings, requiring considerable machining, and large quantities of concrete to extend the depth of the bed several feet below the floor of the building.

This problem was presented to the engineers of the Esso European laboratories, among others, and they .began to fabricate test beds in a manner that needed practically no machining and only a small quantity of concrete. A spring-mounted structure: which could largely be prefabricated by electric welding from stock sizes of mild-steel plate and rolled sections, was evolved.

The base of the bed is formed from angle-section steel. with mild-steel plate welded to the top edge, the plates being gapped to form T slots. This has dispensed with the need for machining the insides of the T slots, an operation which might normally involve considerable delay.

At the dynamometer end, the bed has longitudinal :r slots. Cross-bearers on which the unit can be mounted arc

B6 bolted through these slots., At the. opposite end, there are transverse slots carrying tubular supports for the engine bearers. Along each side of the bed. there are three overhanging brackets resting on pedestal-pattern anti-vibrators, which can be bolted direct to a flat concrete floor by any accepted type of foundation bolt, To provide the requisite mass in the spring-mounted structure, the prefabricated steel work is filled in with concrete.

The level of the concrete filling is adjusted so as to prevent the T-headed bolt from falling through the slot.

The weight of the steel structure before loading is 8 cwt. and the additional weight of the concrete is 13 cwt.

This size of bed is found to be suitable '-fOr engines up to 60 b.h.p. A larger model, 11 ft. 6 ins. long, has been constructed with a weight of 1 tons, and can take.a 150 b.h.p. engine. Several of these test beds are now in use, and are proving entirely satisfactory, the transmitted vibration being eliminated. It has been possible to construct and complete the installation of one of these beds in a month, and the method has shown some saving in capital expenditure. Apart from the initial saving, a further advantage is that the complete test bed can be easily removed to a new location. This opens up the possibility of grouping several test beds within a test room.

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