Massive Yet Tiny engine

Sam Or I · Post by **Sam Or I** » 2006-08-13 05:22pm

How fesible is this. Intresting concept none the less. 800 cubic inches of displacement in a 150 LBs package.

http://www.angellabsllc.com/index.html

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2006-08-13 05:46pm

40x power mass ratio? Seems almost too good to be true. I'll beleive it when I see it. And by that I mean when a working model has been thoroughly tested by independant engineers.

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2006-08-13 10:45pm

...how does it work? I can't make heads or tails of the diagrams or figure out the working relationship amongst the different parts...

Sam Or I · Post by **Sam Or I** » 2006-08-14 10:29am

Looking through the website, it looks as though the pistons are in a circle. It looks as though it functions similar to a turbine, but with indvidual combsion chambers. So as the gas combusts it sends the pistons in a circle, spinning the center axis. Then the spark plug goes to the next chamber in line, repeat in a circile pattern.

General Trelane (Retired) · Post by **General Trelane (Retired)** » 2006-08-14 10:51am

Looking at the page with the cut-away photos, there appear to be two rings each having four pistons arranged tangentially around the circumference. The tricky part will be the mechanism that regulates the rotations of these rings, and I find myself being somewhat skeptical about the claimed simplicity of this engine. I'd like to see one up close.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-08-14 10:53am

Is this something like a pseudo-Wankel rotary engine but with standard piston chambers and cams?

General Trelane (Retired) · Post by **General Trelane (Retired)** » 2006-08-15 10:37am

Yes, it is a rotary engine, but that's where the similarity with the Wankel engine ends.

The pictures show a single 'cylinder' in the shape of a torus with eight short 'pistons' in it. These pistons are attached to two rings (four per ring) that maintain their spacing and transfer the motion to the driveshaft. The pistons do look 'conventional' in that they have traditional rings to seal them to the cylinder wall.

No cams are required because there are no valves. Instead, there is an intake zone and exhaust zone on each side of the torus, so these functions happen automatically as the pistons pass these zones.

The tricky part, imo, is regulating the relative motions of the two sets of pistons. They must rotate in one direction only (does that imply some sort of freewheel clutch?). And they must constantly be increasing and decreasing the volumes between the pistons in order to get compression and power cycles. The driveshaft would presumeably rotate at the average speed of the pistons. Unfortunately, the website seems deliberately vague about the mechanism used to do this.

Wyrm · Post by **Wyrm** » 2006-08-15 11:23am

The technical drawings at the bottom of this page shows a schematic of how the engine is constructed, and gives a strong clue of how the motion is achieved. Basically, it's two flying crankshafts, which couples the constant motion of the main shaft to the stuttering motion of the piston wheels.

The power stroke makes the engine operate in such a way that the burning gasses expand. In this engine, the only way for the gasses in the power stroke to expand is to take advantage of the asymmetry of piston's motion; the piston's motion is arraged such that the only way for the gasses to increase volume is to drive the "forward" piston forward at the expense of having the "back" piston shift a little bit forward. Driving the pistons the other way would make the volume decrease, which would not be allowed.

I think that's how it works, anyway.

Azrael · Post by **Azrael** » 2006-08-15 06:00pm

I'm inclined to believe it works, judging by the material on their site. They don't really speak about fuel efficency though and I can't help but think that an 850 hp engine, no matter how it's designed, is going to suck down alot of fuel.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-08-15 06:14pm

Azrael wrote:I'm inclined to believe it works, judging by the material on their site. They don't really speak about fuel efficency though and I can't help but think that an 850 hp engine, no matter how it's designed, is going to suck down alot of fuel.

That's why you start using anti-lithium, silly.

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2006-08-16 07:00am

Yes, the future of internal combustion engines is to combust a matter / antimatter combination inside the cylinders.

Azrael · Post by **Azrael** » 2006-08-16 02:19pm

His Divine Shadow wrote:Yes, the future of internal combustion engines is to combust a matter / antimatter combination inside the cylinders.

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