X-engine ping.
Posted on 07/07/2008 5:56:08 AM PDT by Red Badger
[snip]. Well, we do have such a power plant and at the moment it is sitting doing not a lot really, in a Gold Coast workshop at Southport. It is a four-cylinder, 2.4 litre engine which has been independently certified as being the world's most efficient petrol engine. In other words, for a given amount of petrol burned this engine will do more work than any other anywhere in the world. During testing, the engine achieved a repeatable Brake Specific Fuel Consumption figure of 212g/kWh or 38.6 per cent efficiency, best figure achieved being 207g/kWh or 39.5 per cent efficiency. This figure is outstanding as the Toyota Prius Hybrid has a BSFC figure of 236g/kWh or 34.7 per cent efficiency. And this is still while the Revetec engine is in a crude state, at a stage of development designer Brad Howell-Smith says is barely off the drawing board. And there is no magic involved. It doesn't run on water or hydrogen or incorporate some hitherto undiscovered metallurgy. There is no sealed black box, which will self-destruct on opening, that performs this feat. Howell-Smith has simply taken the most inefficient part of the usual internal combustion engine found in 99.9 per cent of cars and replaced it with something far more efficient. [snip] Revetec had to match the grant and the $2 million engine is now as developed as Howell-Smith and his machinist Paul Moitzi can make it. "We have the world's most efficient engine and that is with very crude cylinder head technology. We made the cylinder heads from a solid billet of aluminium and there is a huge amount of improvement that can be made with better heads,"
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
how much hp? can it get out of it’s own way?
They say it will flip the trike over.
I’d like to see this in a VW or Porsche on a 1/4 mile track.
Cool design.
X-engine ping.
That X4 layout does make sense for an aircraft engine. Should be interesting to see if they get any takers to develop the cam concept further...I’d love to see if it can do what they say it does when scaled up into, say, a normal inline 4 or V6.
}:-)4
The center bearings of the rollers attached to the pistons look like they’d have some pretty high forces acting on them. I suspect there might be a longevity problem there.
Ping for later
DARPA?
i dunno. there’s something doubtful - if this was all it claims to be, it would already be in production.
They did say the US military is very interested, and working on an X config for unmanned drones.
That trike is an old VW-trike conversion. Was real popular in the 80’s but with an old air cooled VW in the back driving thru the VW transaxle. With a stock 52HP bug engine in it you better not start out in 1st gear or the front wheel is coming off the ground. They have replaced a 180 lb. VW engine with this thing that weighs more and puts out more HP and expects everybody to be “wowed” by the wheelies. I would venture to say that sitting still if you sat on the engine, the front wheel would come off the ground.
All that aside, this thing looks interesting but I am concerned about the durability of the cranklobe/piston interface.
Yes, those roller bearings would be the weak point.
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