Rotary Valve Engines and seals? (design)

The late Canadian, "Mad Man Bill Philips", made these work, but they also had problems with the seals.

 

With all the time and money Coates has put into this design over the past 35 or so years; you'd figure that if it was going to be a world-beater, it would have by now.

I see they are now building generators with the rotary valve heads, so maybe the technology is more suited to constant RPM use...

When I first saw this concept as a teenager, I thought it was gonna be the "next big thing"...and then, ****...nothing.

Seems like fairly limited options as far as port sizing and timing compared to a cam and valve setup. The dyno comparison on Coates website is a joke...

 

I can't disagree with you. It would be all conjecture at best. But the Knight Engine Corp. built and sold these engines here in the states during the '20-'30s. And the Mother Country people at Bristol were building them for years up until around 1950. Technology has improved since then that should make a better product possible. But it also allowed the Turbine engine to improve almost beyond belief.

 

Rich,I can't disagree with you either,you are beyond me Here's a photo of a WW2 sleeve valve aircraft raidal engine with the front gear case cover removed to show the gears necessary to drive the sleeves.Not exactly user friendly Nice subject to discuss !

 

Now I had to laugh when I saw that. I can just imagine sitting down with that box of gears and a manual. They must have employed clock makers to ***emble that. I have seen Knight engines and they don't look like that.

 

Issues of lubrication, wear, and friction aside, the biggest shortcomming of rotary valves(contrary to claimed performance advantages) is that they cannon achieve the time vs area capability of on ordinary cam and poppet valve. It's one of those things that seems like a good idea but actually isn't better.

 

Believe it or not my dad designed ,and built a set of rotary valve heads for a 231 Buick Indy motor about 20 years ago.My dad past away in 06 ,but i still have the motor .I heard it run once but it burnt up the seals in about 20 minutes of run time .My dad was obsessed with it and spent half his life and all of his savings to build it .I actually hate the damn thing because of it ...

 

I think the aircraft you're thinking of is a Supermarine Seafang, which was a post-war evolution of the Seafire, a carrier-based version of the Spitfire. It was powered by a conventional sohc 48-valve Rolls-Royce Griffon. In fact the Supermarine Spiteful XVI from which it was developed was a bit faster at 494mph.

The Hawker Sea Fury wasn't quite as fast, but was no slouch either. That was powered by a sleeve-valve 18-cylinder Bristol Centaurus double-radial, which used the simpler and more elegant Burt-McCollum sleeve-valve system.

The Burt-McCollum system used single sleeves, thereby eliminating the need for inter-sleeve lubrication that gave the concentric-two-sleeve Knight engine its reputation for high oil consumption and exhaust smoke. It was first used by Argyll in 1911. If I remember correctly it was used briefly by Vauxhall in the early Vintage years.



This system used a combination of rotary and axial motion to get the sleeves to uncover intake and exhaust ports in order. It was this combined motion that made for its superior oil-retention qualities compared with the Knight type. If memory serves Sir Harry Ricardo did a lot of work around Burt-McCollum engines, and was achieving really silly compression ratios - and consequent levels of fuel efficiency - on low-octane '20s fuels. It was that work that made the system viable and successful for aircraft use.

I for one would like to see an automotive-sized Burt-McCollum sleeve-valve V8.

 

Double sleeve valves(one inside the other) offer better time vs area than single sleeve valves. But, even double sleeve valves can't achieve the time vs area that a cam and poppet valve can.

 

http://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8671&hilit=rotary+valves

A pretty good read of a guy that us trying to build his own heads. also some good links in that thread

 

In the early 50s Norton experimented with a rotary valve for their racing single. I believe that lack of funds and material brought it to a halt. Shame as it looks like it has great potential.

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http://home.people.net.au/~mrbdesign/PDF/AutoTechBRV.pdf

 

I think Jay Leno bought an engine that some inventor had built in their ba*****t. Maybe he'd be interested in that engine.

 

This will certainly get people thinking again. Maybe it is possible. I have to admit that I know nothing about production costs. But when I look at all the gears in the bristol engine or the bearings and seals in the rotary pictured here, All I see is Euros-Dollars-Yen piled up very high. But more power to you if you can at least try.

 

On turbine engine air bleeds from the hot section, the ****erfly valves looked like Inconal with a piston ring around the cir***ference. I don't see how you could ever get anything like that to operate at 3000 cycles per minute. Fortunately what ever you made would be computer controlled and use solenoids or pneumatics to operate the mechanism. Save all those gears.

 

Your dad by chance wasn't Fred Baldwin was he?

 

I spent 35 yeard working for a major OEM engine producer in advanced technology. The last 10 or so years i had as one of my responsibilities the opportunity to screen all the outside "inventions" submitted by inventors and dreamers from around the world. I got to see all of the stuff dreamed up, including alternate power cycles, valve arrangements, and crank / rod arrangements. I met with some truly smart and innovative people who thought they had an "invention" that woud revolutionize powerplants as we know them.

99.99% of inventors cannot deal with constructive discussions re potential design issues, thermal loading issues, manufacturing impediments, or, especially emissions ramifications of their new "technology"

They are unifomly p***ionate towards their ideas and, to a man, blind to the obsticles (and costs) to commerciallization of the alternative concepts they come up with.

Most have no engineering behind them, in fact most inventors don't know the difference between engineering and drawing.

I wish you good luck, but please be realistic about the positives and negatives of your concept.

Don't spend your royalty checks yet

 

I think a lot of inventors are labouring under the misapprehension that the OEMs are looking for inventions that would revolutionize powerplants as we know them. That is to say, they completely underestimate the sort of development vision horizon the OEMs are working with.

It is not to say that the OEMs don't have their own programmes for revolutionizing powerplants as we know them, but it needs to be understood that their primary business is not making cars but operating production facilities profitably. They have a good idea of how they want to be making what they make in twenty, thirty years' time, and all the product development they do has to support that.

A lot of inventions can be made to work by throwing really huge amounts of money at them, but the OEMs won't go for them if they don't fit where they see themselves going. They certainly won't support an invention if it actively conflicts with their idea of what making and selling cars ought to become for them - except, possibly, cynically to demonstrate the idea as unworkable.

 

My design is double the intake and exhaust of any other rotary valve , idk if that is enough to beat poppet valve in time/area opening but its more than most rotary's.

Believe it or not, i just came up with a very similar idea for rotating sleeves about last moday lol... i seem to keep inventing the already invented. Mine was to spin off guides cut out of the piston though.

also, you wouldn't happen to know or tell me what your dad used for seals and how he placed them?

downside of sleeves is thats a lot of moving parts, the more moving parts, the more to break, and a lot of money to make the parts. i prefer to design things simple for reliability, as Michail Kalashnikov once said, "Things that are complex are not useful, Things that are useful are simple." (inventor of the AK-47 if some don't know )


Im still working on valve timing of poppet valves, turns out its a bit more complicated than i though trying to covert poppet valve timing to half the cir***ference of a rotary valve, my design is more limited in valve timing that conventional poppet or rotary valves, and having difficulty letting the engine scavenge. I've attached some photos though of our 3D printer printing my head design and a top down view.

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Right now our 3D printer is backed up printing parts for some customer so i cant print my tooling for a single cylinder prototype yet, Iv came up with a few more seal designs though that i am going to test.

I have been planning for some time to start a youtube channel(also videos of car shows, drag racing, maybe Bonneville if we get out there) to show how exactly things are made at our foundry and machine shop, a more in-depth "How its made" if you watch shows like that. whether it be a customer needing a part or the complete process starting from concept-design-tooling-prototype-manufacturing.

It will mostly be to get more people to know about our company but to also interact and get feedback from viewers/customers.I also think instead of just me designing this thing by myself in the dark, if i have an audience watching through the process, maybe some people will be able to provide some input in the design and help.(not saying i should listen to every person that has a say on the internet )

here are some links to coates patents and drawing to them i just ran across if anyone is interested, i haven't had time to read through them yet.

http://www.wikipatents.com/US-Patent-4989576/internal-combustion-engine
http://www.wikipatents.com/US-Patent-5109814/spherical-rotary-valve
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P****r?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6718933.PN.&OS=PN/6718933&RS=PN/6718933

 

Thank you, im well aware of what this can turn into , i've seen and heard it to, i know first hand that most people have no idea how much time, work and money it actually takes to make things and it can become quite the pain in the $$$ working with some. I have a major benefit over most though in that i have complete access and the knowledge to making my own tooling, molds, castings, metallurgy and 5-axis CNC and only cost me my time and the price of the material which i get at wholesale.

To tell you the true though, this idea derived from just wanting to build a really fast car 3 years ago, or at least a very high performance street engine that i wouldn't mind changing out heads every **** amount of miles. Not saying thats its sole purpose and only limited to that there of, but i have no dreams of revolutionizing the automotive industry or becoming a multi-millionaire off this design. This could just turn out to be a really cool shock and awe engine that we just drag race with (if it even works.)

 

Here in New Zealand, Ralph Watson, a very clever engineer, converted his 1931 V-Twin BSA car engine to rotary valves in the 1980s. He died a few years ago but as far as I know the car is still in running order. Ralph's detailed story of the development of the rotary valve setup, along with his other projects, can be found in the book Ralph Watson Special Engineer which was privately published by Trevor Sheffield of Auckland, New Zealand. The book is well worth a read of you can find a copy. Ralph is better known for building the Lycoming Special sports racing car in the 1950s. Another car which still exists.

 

I will take a pic of my dads ***embled rotary valve engine for you guys to look at ,but i dont care to discuss the internals of it .He never patented it .I will say that the first seals he used that burnt up were made from Bakelite the seals he used that worked were made from silicone bronze ...

 

I'm guessing you are using the same idea I had the first time I saw coates design years ago. using one valve per cylinder and rotate the valve to align with the correct port??

only problem there is no valve overlap, and no scavenging affect....

 

This is the first I've seen of this engine in many years. I remember seeing one on display at the SEMA show in 1993 and I believe they were looking for investors back then. The problems then were the same as discussed here. Sealing around the spherical valves, especially the exhaust, at different temps.

 

I have don't really know to much about Coates design and i was 3 years old when they debuted at sema so i didn't really get a chance to see one up close . I've gone through some of his patents on the net but I've never actually seen one run, just pictures of the outside, at first glance at mine it will look very similar but they are worlds apart.

I'd don't know if he had overlap in his design but mine is double overhead and will actually have double the exhaust and intake port area of a equal sized poppet valve counterpart, overlap flow efficiency equal to or greater than a hemi head(up to 90-140 degrees of what would theoretically be valve stem degrees offset from each other all though there is no stem just ports), fully open exhaust and intake during overlap and only run 5-20 degrees of total crank rotation during overlap, run fully closed 180 degrees of compression and power stroke and still have exhaust and intake duration/opening equal to or greater than a conventional poppet valve . o and ill be running duel spark plugs and possibly direct injection.

I know all that sounds outrages but i can't go into any detail of how i can do it yet, i can tell you however though i've ran across a very special coating that will reduce my components friction to almost nothing and is heat resistant, im hoping it will be the answer to my seals and to actually run the entire head dry(no oil), also less friction will result in lower overall temperature.

I currently have my pattern and corebox ready to print on our 3D printer and writing the post processors for our CNC machines for the 3D milling of the head. the printer is tied up right now printing out another part im making though. im videoing the entire process of the part im making, showing what it takes to manufacture a part from start to finish and ill post it on here when i have it done, i've seen a couple threads of people interested in how the casting process actually works.

 

Ralph explains the development of his seals here... http://ralphwatson.scienceontheweb.net/rotary.html

 

Not quite on topic, but similar in concept that you eliminate the cam and valvetrain.

Odd to comprehend but here it is Beare Six Stroke?

 

Iv seen that, made by a Australian farmer I believe.

 

Years ago I knew some guys that invested with Coates and lost thier shirts, they were not rich but just working guys. They showed me info and a vidio but I stayed away from "investing".

 

All fascinating stuff here. Been an interest of mine for years now. I firmly believe the weak link in the engine's design is the reciprocating action of piston to crank.
If someone could take the ****el rotary, and some of your cylinder head ideas, coupled with direct fuel injection, you'd have something vastly more efficient than the usual 35% 4-cycle engine