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The Napier Lion was a 12-cylinder broad arrow configuration aircraft engine built by Napier & Son starting in 1917, and ending in the 1930s. A number of advanced features made it the most powerful engine of its day, and kept it in production long after contemporary designs had stopped production. It is particularly well known for its use on a number of racing designs, in aircraft, boats, and cars. ==Design and development== Early in the First World War Napier were contracted to build aero engines to designs from other companies: initially a Royal Aircraft Factory model and then Sunbeams. Both engines proved to be unreliable, and in 1916 Napier decided to design their own. Reasoning that the key design criteria were high power, light weight, and low frontal area, Napier's engineers laid out the engine with its 12 cylinders in what they called a "broad arrow"—three banks of four cylinders sharing a common crankcase. This suggested the design's first name, the Triple-Four. The configuration is also known as a W engine. The engine was also advanced in form, the heads using four valves per cylinder with twin overhead camshafts on each bank of cylinders and a single block being milled from aluminium instead of the more common separate-cylinder steel construction used on almost all other designs. Under A. J. Rowledge, the design of the engine, which had been renamed Lion, was completed in 1917, and the first hand-built prototypes ran later that year. It was fitted to an DH.9 in early 1918, and many cooling problems were observed during testing. In addition, the milled block was difficult to build with the required accuracy and the design reverted to separate cylinders, although they remained aluminium. Both problems were solved by the middle of the year and the engine entered production in June 1918. The first Lion I versions delivered from their 24 litres. This output made the Lion the most powerful Allied aircraft engine, which had previously been the Liberty L-12, which produced . As the most powerful engine available (particularly after a turbocharger became an option in 1922), the Lion went on to commercial success. Through the years between the wars the Lion was ubiquitous, and Napier manufactured little else. They stopped making cars in 1925, and little thought was given to replacing their world-famous product. Between the wars the Lion engine powered over 160 different types of aircraft. In highly tuned racing versions the engine could reach , and it was used to break many world records: height, air speed, and distance in aircraft, boats, delivering in a highly tuned Lion for a water speed record of in 1933. In land speed records, Lion engines powered many of Sir Malcolm Campbell's including a record of over in 1932 and John Cobb's ''Railton Mobil Special'' in 1947—a record that came well after the Lion had passed its prime and stood until the 1960s. The record had been held by British drivers for 32 years. Lions powered successful entrants in the most prestigious event in air racing, the Schneider Cup, in 1922 and 1927, but were then dropped by Supermarine in favour of a new engine, the Rolls-Royce R, which had been designed specially for racing. During the 1930s a new generation of much larger and more powerful engines started to appear, and the Lion became uncompetitive. By the time the Bristol Hercules and the Rolls-Royce Merlin arrived in the late 1930s, the Lion was obsolete. The Sea Lion, a marine version of the Lion, was used to power high speed air-sea rescue launches operated by the RAF. The Lion aero engine was also adapted to power propeller-driven motor sleighs, which were used for high-speed transport and SAR duties on sea ice by the Finnish Air Force and Navy. Turning away from the broad arrow layout, Napier designed new engines using the more compact H engine layout. The 16-cylinder Rapier produced , the 24-cylinder Dagger delivered just under . These were both smaller than contemporary designs from other companies, so Napier started afresh with a new sleeve valve design, which evolved into the Sabre. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Napier Lion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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