What about more recent (in relative terms) developments in cylinder liners? There's BMW's nikasel (sp?) liners (and all the huge problems they caused), although I don't know the theory behind these. There's also the fibre reinforced cylinder liners used in VTEC engines to get the high rpms. You could do a comparison of these vs traditional unlined engines.
Of course, there's always electronic ignition systems to write about, and all the variations thereof. If your more of an electronics bod, plently on the introduction of sensors and adaptive ecus to control advaing and retardation in a "transparent" manner.
Or what about Alfa's twin spark system? That's a nice simple principle to explain - although make sure you're taking about the orignal versions, not the more recent ones which - so I'm told - just have the second spark plug present for marketing reasons more than anything.
Or, you could talk about all the vairous methods of modifying valve timing -- you could even work the Polo GTI / Lupo GTI into that discussion if you wanted to go VW-specific.
Or you could do a comparison of the VAG TDI engine technologies with the Ford v. high pressure diesels vs. traditional diesels - you could even work a discussion of turbos into that.
You could do something extremely practical focusing on the design provisions made to ease / simplify the mass manufacture of these things. There's *huge* amounts of literature out there on the modularisation / grouping of components to divide a complex product into subassemblies.
Or, depening on what's in the cirriculum these days, you could go all green and talk about design technology provisions to aid end of life "take-back" (now law in Europe) and diassembly /remanufacturing / recycling. But is this specific-enough to internal combustion engines? You could just talk about remanufacturing - now there's a subject (large chunks of my thesis are on this
), but provisions for this are generally made at the component (rather than assemble (i.e. engine)) level).
Of all the the above, I think the following have the most mileage in them:
1/
variable valve timing - methods and advantages disavantages of each
2/
development in the "humanising" of diesel engines by ramping up the injection pressures / compression ratios
3/
cylinder liners. << closest to the "materials" aspect
Because you mention "historical" developments, I guess I'd want to write the thing chronologically (geek = "illustrated by means of a timeline or - even better - a "family tree" mapping out the origins of the concepts, listing manufacturers / individual inventors / patent numbers, if you can get them (these are readily searchable these days))
Just thoughts...
Deek.
