W16 engine

A Bugatti Veyron W16 engine.

A W16 engine is a sixteen cylinder piston internal combustion engine in a W configuration. All W16 engines consist of two banks of eight cylinders, coupled to a single crankshaft.

Volkswagen Group currently produces W16 engines. Volkswagen's design is a stretched form of its W12 engine, which is itself based on technology from the VR6 engine. The engine was introduced with the Bentley Hunaudieres concept car, a mid-engined sports car, which was never intended for production, and was later used in the Audi Rosemeyer concept car (Bentley has been a Volkswagen Group holding since 1998).

W engine design

The VR6 engine is a narrow angle (15°) V6 engine, designed to fit in the confined engine bay of a front wheel drive car. It is very short compared to an inline 6, because the cylinders are staggered, even cylinders moved forward, odd cylinders moved backward to reduce the length. Joining two such designs together into a W engine creates a design that is much shorter than a V with the same number of cylinders, but not too much wider. Volkswagen's W12 engines utilize two VR6-like sets of cylinders mated at 72 degrees, and the W8 consisted of two VR4 engines at the 72 degree angle. In the W16, each side is made up of eight cylinders, but the 'bank' angle is increased to 90 degrees.

Note that this design differs from the W18 engine that Volkswagen produced for its Bugatti concept cars of 1998 and 1999. The narrow angle of each set of cylinders allows just two camshafts to drive each pair of banks, so just four are needed in total. For this reason, the engine is sometimes described as a WR16.

W16 engine specifications

The Volkwagen Group W16 as configured for the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is a 16-cylinder quad-turbocharged engine with four valves per cylinder. The engine is 71 cm (about 28 inches) long and weighs approximately 400 kg (882 lbs). Maximum power output is 1,001 PS (736 kW; 987 hp) at 6000 rpm, with a maximum torque of 1,250 N·m (920 ft·lbf) from 2200 to 5500 rpm. This engine is also rumored being considered for use in other Volkswagen Group products, and may have been based on a Bentley concept model.

External links

• Volkswagen's VR6 and W-engines