True, but I think the common factor is the cast iron block. After all, that is what you are trying to pull the heat out of. If you had a large enough capacity radiator to drop the coolant temperature 100 degrees, what would the ideal speed through the block be?
But, that may not be the limiting factor. As you say, there's all sorts of other materials too.
It's just some food for thought.... I'm sure that in each of the car companies, there's some squirrel little guy that has the answers, but has to fight against the stylists and bean counters for the ideal cooling solution.
You all should do a little thermodynamic research to really optimize your numbers for cooling engines. I dug this gem up first:
where:
Q over
t is the rate of heat transfer - the amount of heat transferred per second, measured in Joules per second, or Watts.
k is the thermal conductivity of the material - for example, copper has a thermal conductivity of 390, but wool has a thermal conductivity of just 0.04.
T1 is the temperature of one object, and
T2 is the temperature of the other. Since it's a temperature difference, you can actually use Celsius or Kelvin, whichever is most convenient. And
d is the thickness of the material we're interested in. [
Heat Transfer Through Conduction: Equation & Examples - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com ]
Calculate your Q based on the heat of enthalpy of gasoline/air in the cylinder for the initial heat, and the initial t would be how long it takes the power stroke to complete. Use the thickness of the cooling jacket for d. The delta T would be the temperature of the flamefront minus the desired temperature of the coolant, say, 373 Kelvin, the boiling point of water at one atmosphere pressure.
I then would solve for t, the time and look at the flow rate for the coolant in the neighborhood of the cylinder in this case, and then work with the capacity of the two hgeads for total volume of coolant, to puke out the desired capacity of the pump. Since my tiime is short for now, I can't do these sums but maybe later it could be FUN to work ths out, then puke it into a spreadsheet.