When heat engines generate too much entropy, due to eg friction or uncontrolled heat transfer, they overheat.
This may not be a problem, unless the engine is powering a plane or a race car, where engine failure can have sudden and catastrophic consequences.
Fortunately, these days, we have relatively cheap access to thermographic cameras.
Today’s invention is a system which uses a number of cameras in say an engine bay. These detect any hotspots and then direct a cooling airflow (or oil/water…) at that location until the temperature can be shown to have evened out.
This airflow might come via a duct placed in a vehicle’s slipstream with vanes which could be computer controlled. If we had a space shuttle in operation, such a process could be applied to any overheating wing and fuselage surfaces.
