Ilmor F1 rotary valve project

[knightly]

now on a scale of 1 to 10 - this is deffo an 11 on the interesting meter ........Ilmor F1 spent years developing a Rotary valve F1 engine....... only for the technology to be banned by the FIA in the new engine regs.......well worth a read........I bet my pants that Mario Illien will be using this rotary valve technology in his new V4 800cc moto-gp bike engine.......if this technology will end up anywhere - I bet it will be on a motorbike.

http://home.people.net.au/~mrbdesign/

[agent006]

Fascinating. I'm amazed that it's not made more of an impact. My cynical side wonders where we'd be if the technology was developed by Ferrari.

[thong]

agent006 said:

Fascinating. I'm amazed that it's not made more of an impact. My cynical side wonders where we'd be if the technology was developed by Ferrari.

no it wasant,radial aero engines use'd it many years back with good results,it wont work in run of the mill car engines cus they will use cheap materials.

[stevieturbo]

I'd imagine an aero engine, would also operate within a smaller rpm band. Cars really do use a huge spread of rpm's.

[tank slapper]

thong said:

no it wasant,radial aero engines use'd it many years back with good results,it wont work in run of the mill car engines cus they will use cheap materials.

Some engines made by Bristol and Napier used sleeve valves, though they were different in operation to the ones in that article. They had a cylinder with ports in, which was rotated around the outside of the cylinder, as well as being reciprocated. This type uses a cylinder at 90 degrees to the piston instead of a normal cylinder head, which seems a much simpler design.

I don't see why it couldn't be used in production cars eventually, as it is just a matter of engineering. Turbochargers used to be pretty difficult to make, but modern engineering and metallurgy have overcome the problems with them. I think it would be down to whether a company has the desire to explore a different technology, whereas they already understand and have tooling to make existing poppet valves.

[ELAN+2]

I would imagine that carbon build up on a road engine would be an issue for this design. On F1 and aero engines frequent re-builds are the order of the day. However, should the removal/clean/re seal of the valve assembly be a simple task, then it could become viable for hi performance road cars/bikes.
For it to become a main stream production reality the design would have to produce dramatically reduced emissions, and have reduced production costs, else the accountants would can it!!

Mark

[dilbert]

Thats all very well, but where does the spark plug go?

[grahambell]

Clever stuff. An alternative rotary valve technology that's been discussed on these pages before is the Coates engine. www.coatesengine.com/

[knightly]

Dilbert - I thought that too......but upon looking closer at the section of a head - where they show you the sealing method - you can see two angled holes - which makes me think this design requires 2 spark plugs per cylinder in order to promote even flame growth from either side of the cylinder......I would be surprised to see it in a car engine as the geartrain assembly would be a nightmare.......but the likes of BMW went into production with the sewing machine of engines known as "valve tronic"......so never say never.......I reckon it will end up in something done my Mario Illiens engine group that recently split away from the main F1 mercedes operation......I bet it will end up in moto-gp or something at lemans - as the ACO (lemans rule makers) like something new.

[annodomini2]

ELAN said:

I would imagine that carbon build up on a road engine would be an issue for this design. On F1 and aero engines frequent re-builds are the order of the day. However, should the removal/clean/re seal of the valve assembly be a simple task, then it could become viable for hi performance road cars/bikes.
For it to become a main stream production reality the design would have to produce dramatically reduced emissions, and have reduced production costs, else the accountants would can it!!

Mark

The problem with rotary valves has always been seals, small projects have been working on this for years, major manufacturers ignore it due to investments already made in existing systems.

Edited to Correct quote

Edited by annodomini2 on Wednesday 22 November 15:34

Edited by annodomini2 on Wednesday 22 November 15:34

[love machine]

Love the idea, by mucking about with the shapes of the slots, you could create all kinds of pseudo timings. I wonder how the very high pressures exerted on the barrel would influence its movement. Consider the device is rotating continually, when it has an enormous force on it, opposing this movement. I also reckon that the SC gears will be a tad noisy. (not a problem though).


Good idea though.

[Mr Whippy]

Nice, think of the optimised valve area, you could run a vanos type system too where another tube insert is phased against the main outer valve tube, so you could alter intake section and all sorts.

Could get some silly outputs and rpm's with no worry about valve bounce and all the problems that come with lots of fast bits occupying the same space in very close timing to each other

Looks very compact and light... cambelt/driveline failure wouldn't result in massive damage to head valve gear! Thats a big + point...


Looks like a win win situation (except cost maybe), and considering F1 is moving towards diversifying tech for real life apps it seems odd they have effectively nullified the use of this technology!


I expect this kind of engine would be great in modern road cars due to pedestrian bonnet impact regulations, that extra 50mm+ off the top of the cylinder head is great! Might see normally styled cars again
A TVR S6 engine would be bullet proof with this type of top-end

Dave

Edited by Mr Whippy on Wednesday 22 November 14:16

[tr7v8]

Have a look at this site, smaller scale but!
www.rcvengines.com/

[rev-erend]

That is a superb publication .. would be nice to read that in it's entirity every 2 months

The rotary valve idea looks great - offering a great solution to the popet valve restriction but can also see the flip side of sealing effectively along the entire lenght, plus longevity issues..

[cymtriks]

This looks like a cross rotary valve set up in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY that I sugested to some engineers back in the late eighties. The only difference is in the sealing which this design meets by using a tightly controlled gap while mine relied on two floating seals, one on each side of the port.

My seal design doubled as variable valve timing devices by moving within the housing to progressively close the port.

In any case the basic shape of that valve isn't new, it's been around since the thirties. I thought it might give a higher rpm ceiling than the poppet valve but assumed that having a huge rotating cylinder on each combustion chamber would add too much friction and/or guzzle oil.

Oh well, something else I should have patented!