New engine technology arrives
Slider engine fixed and ready to roll, say developers
Slider engine
The slider engine was unveiled at the recent Engine Expo in Stuttgart to critical acclaim, developed by Slider Engine Technologies (AU). Visitors saw a highly developed Vee-twin featuring this new engine technology.
Engineers at Slider Engine Technologies said they have developed a way to stabilise the pistons and cranking arrangement of the scotch yoke engine. The company also unveiled manufacturing solutions for V, inline, W, boxer and radial engine configurations.
Accoridng to Slider Engine Technologies, the technology has the potential to unify and rationalise the R&D efforts of manufacturers around the globe. For consumers, uptake of the technology by manufacturers will deliver significant advantages including improved fuel economy and a considerable increase in overall refinement.
Advantages are said to include:
- Greater responsiveness / acceleration
- Higher maximum RPM
- Greater power density and range
- Increased volumetric / thermal / mechanical efficiency
- Reduced cost of vehicle manufacture
- Increase in engine durability
- Reduced mass
- Reduced NOX & Carbon (equilibrium conditions, crevice volumes)
- Reduced idle speed (mechanical efficiency)
- Reduced valve inertias (sinusoidal piston motion)
- Reduced piston inertias (sinusoidal piston motion)
- Massively reduced noise, vibration & harshness
History
The Raffaele brothers became interested in the scotch yoke engines from a TV programme featuring the technical and commercial failure of yet another doomed scotch yoke engine development, which had been underway in Australia for several decades. The brothers asked why scotch yoke engine development been narrowly focused on a boxer configuration.
With this question in mind, and realising the scotch yoke principle could have no commercial future without the inclusion of in-line and V format engines, the Raffaeles began a search of the global patent database and technical publications, while designing and manufacturing a scotch yoke powerplant in order to gain further insight into the mechanism's behaviour under load.
In just over three months the brothers had designed and built an engine from scratch, but this first unit failed within hours.
"We have a policy of jumping in at the deep end", said Michael. "It's been our experience that more finesse, which inevitably soaks up time, doesn't necessarily equal relevant information. We knew from the damage to our prototype what was missing, and why. We learnt that the offset scotch yoke cannot tolerate free rotation of its big end mounted drive block because it leads to the impartation of instantaneous accelerations and a very certain catastrophe.'
Following an intensive review of relevant literature, Mercedes-Benz patent filing DE 3624753 (1986), which included the generic device of a piston guide system for controlling free rotation, became of specific interest to the Raffaeles. However, they realised that what was described could not arrest the problem, the guides being positioned at too distant a location to function effectively.
"We feel that Mercedes-Benz, along with so many others, was defeated by an optical illusion", said Peter. "We suspect they believed that the area swept by the big end of the crankshaft during its rotation was automatically a no-go area for a guide system."
To their immense surprise the brothers found that with simple alterations to the scale of certain components, a rail and race guide system could actually fit into this so called 'prohibited' space. The guides are configured to dip in and out the swept volume without contacting the big end.
Christened the slider engine, the new unit features pistons and con-rods that are twice as expensive to manufacture as those of a conventional powerplant. However, Slider Engine Technologies argues this on-cost is simply dwarfed by the technology's benefits: 30 per cent slower idle speed, 15 per cent increase in max rpm, lighter and far less complex geartrains and drivelines, leading to reduced vehicle mass and cost reductions throughout the entire vehicle.
For European manufacturers with significant investment in technology centred on NVH issues linked to the conventional engine, the Slider Engine could seem to be detrimental to all that they have developed with its inherently superior NVH solution. The Slider Engine team believes this initial reaction is understandable but unlikely to prevail given the size and make up of the global automotive industry.
The slider engine is compatible with all known development trends and fuel types. SLT said its ultra low NVH and increased speed range make it a good platform for development of tomorrows HCCI, VCR and common-rail diesel engines.
With 25-30 years of manufacture still to go before the piston engine is superseded by fuel cells and other more exotic technologies, the only certainty is that development of the combustion engine is not finished.
Since the engine's unveiling at the start of June, SLT said manufacturers have been requesting demonstrations of the unit's capabilities and potential.
- More at Slider Engine Technologies
Shear stress on the crank appear to me higher than with a conventional engine (*)
(*) or at least less diffused along the crank.
>> Edited by Thom on Thursday 16th June 14:59
ProPlus said:
Think I read somewhere that the next advancement in engine technology (petrol) would be to be able to create a common rail petrol engine simliar to the diesel version (probably in name alone), is this correct or have I been dreaming stuff up again??
That and electronic valves rather than cams.
robdickinson said:
Think I read somewhere that the next advancement in engine technology (petrol) would be to be able to create a common rail petrol engine simliar to the diesel version (probably in name alone), is this correct or have I been dreaming stuff up again??
That and electronic valves rather than cams.
How far is this new technology off from seeing a working model running on the roads and would it mean that diesel no longer would have the advantage that they recieved when this technology was brought in for them.
the future is determine to be Hydrogen fuel cell, due to the continue increase (or remain in high price) of cruel oil prices!
**thx to the big demand from China, as all industry and production shifts to this country.
in order for a country (such as the Big USA) to have advantage in economy
technology is everything
so far, Europe countries are among the first to push the use of Hydrogen fuel cell power in public transportation
(such as starting from power generation in industry usage, and the use of Hydrogen fuel cell engine in public transportation.
however, USA now is the inventor and tehcnology patent holder
**notice the news from finance.yahoo.com, and click on a company called "Quantum" (Nasdaq QTWW)
the USA Army already orders the first few vehicles of Hydrogen fuel cell cars.
General Motors (GM) already signs contract with QTWW to be the main supplier in this technology
**note: QTWW will start making profit from 2006(a sharp ordering increase)
also the latest news is Toyota, Honda, and basically other major automotive brands have already pay money for its technology advantage.
the plan is introducing hydrogen fuel cell vehicle to the market by 2010
**note: SHELL HYDROGEN already builds the first hydrogen station in USA, and there are more stations coming, according to the plan in the contract to fullfill certain number of refill stations by 2007
Myself as a chinese,
I already checked about the China technology
and no! China has no technology success in the development of the hydrogen fuel cell engine, not to mention to develop other technology of using orange skins, tree leafs, and other fruits to transfer to ethernol (which can act as a power source of a hydrogen engine.
NOTE:
there are 2 ways to make the hydrogen engine work
(1)to refuel the tank with compressed hydrogen gas.
**technology owned by QTWW, and building refill station by SHELL HYDROGEN (part of SHELL corp)
(2)to buy bottles of ethernol /methanol and pour it into the tank
the engine has an extra unit to get ethernol/methanol into hydrogen,
and then power the engine...
**these can be mass production by any company who can convert orange peels, or tree leafs (note: USA has this technology already for mass production) to ethernol....
and you can imagine shops who sell these bottles...
**the only trouble is this can be dangerous to carry ethernol or methanol with you, as they can explode in high temperature.
**it is still an option for smaller power unit (not vehicles)
anyway, this information is off topic.
but just my 2cents.
Plus it comes with all the "usual" benefits, less emissions, more power, more revs, smoother, long life, etc etc.
Reminds me of that amusing snake oil poster someone posted up on a different thread the other day.
How can they know they have all these benefits until they've got some serious testing under their belt.
OK so it might run, but what about productionisation, and longivety etc.
Plus they're acknowledging that it will cost more than a plain vanilla motor. Oh dear.
Still I'm a bit fan of finding new ways of doing things so I'll give it the
Andy
GreenV8S said:
Think I read somewhere
Wasn't it called Diesotto, or something like that?
See to remember it was somewhere on PH but cant remember how long ago it was, but it was an interesting read..... maybe on a thread about the anniversary of diesel or something similar.
ridds said:
Another
www.revetec.com
I was initially going to say that that one's less horrendous. But,...
The contra-rotating cam/crank lobes would be a bit of a git to build into anything with more cylinders.
And the contra-rotating cams, which appear to be trying to solve one problem, actually cause another. The piston's experience a net torque around the axis of travel. So now they need another extra feature to control that...
ProPlus said:
ProPlus said:
Think I read somewhere that the next advancement in engine technology (petrol) would be to be able to create a common rail petrol engine simliar to the diesel version (probably in name alone), is this correct or have I been dreaming stuff up again??
That and electronic valves rather than cams.
How far is this new technology off from seeing a working model running on the roads and would it mean that diesel no longer would have the advantage that they recieved when this technology was brought in for them.
BMW Valvetronic as used in the latest generation of 3-series compact I think does this to some degree. IMHO it's only of limited benefit as yet because of all the extra valvetrain inertia it lends (it doesn't rev)... so expect to see it in more widespread use in 5-6 years
There's a whole lot of mileage in internal combustion yet. I'd say at least a hundred years!
ProPlus said:It was on here, it was Mercedes and apparently it'll be within the next decade: www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=10679
ProPlus said:
Think I read somewhere
Wasn't it called Diesotto, or something like that?
See to remember it was somewhere on PH but cant remember how long ago it was, but it was an interesting read..... maybe on a thread about the anniversary of diesel or something similar.
So If anyone knows of a site where I can look up patents, I'd be interested to get started on looking. If not for that then for inspiration. I'm always thinking about this stuff, ever since I was in my early teens.
The motor is pretty simple, the mechanisms aren't as used conventionally. So there is energy loss for the friction and the moving of the weights of these two simple mechanisms. But I figure they would weigh about as much as a common piston/conrod setup. They'll deal with a similar force on a simpler mechanism. The key, is that the rotor is fixed against the crank. No mechanisms involved in the major load bearing structure. Also, the pressure applied by the expansion of the gas is applied directly into turning the crank.
So I figure it picks up a much better conversion of energy from the explosion to the crank. It's possible to make it a single rotor design with two roller bearings, or many rotors with shell bearings. The base design has differant kinds of configurations based on the same principle from what I have come up with. One version more power dense, one smooth, one with 'longer' power phase than compression, fast compressing, slow compressing... whatever works best for requirements. It'd be interesting to develop.
Anyway, I just need to save some cash, look at patents and keep at it. It pretty much all depends on one seal, and whether it's already solved or needs some work. I'm a pessimist, but then again, I think it may be solvable with a very similar thing to the corner seal of the wankel. Depends.
I've looked around a deal on the net and not come across it. Which spooks me out as it must not work, or it just hasn't been approached from my odd angle...
I once had a VERY similar idea I jotted one evening to the Velovsky / someone else motor before I found it. Which was disappointing. Though I've since looked at that idea again after seeing a picture of something else entirely, the fundamental of it and had an idea for a differant motor. Only, I don't know if it'd be able to make the compression, as there's a point that would require the shaping of stuff to be very exact to get the compression higher. The more exact the seal can trace the shape at a key point, the better the compression you could get.
I'd have to work on it with someone who's great at maths & geometry to work out what the maximum compression for the idea is using the same tolerance limits of the seals used in the Renesis, because seals shouldn't be a problem, spark not a problem, porting should be impressive, thermal loss should be minimal (I think it'd be closer to piston in chamber surface area per volume than wankel), mechanism simple and unlike a rotary, the gears aren't being used to make the rotor move in an unnatural shape. The gear for this idea is used for timing, not the actual motion.
The motion is circular again, not offset like my first idea and the Velovsky. Which is what I'd prefer. This one would be simple to use porting with. Power density? Not sure. I haven't done the maths, as I'm not great with geometry. Aaaaanyway...)
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