I agree.. but I have to mention, I am one of those people you mentioned who has spent almost 22 years designing a vane powerplant.. There is well over 70 iterations on my design table and shelves. Most of them run, but the one problem that I run into and many others must cross, is the pressure relief on the back sides of each vane. If it is only air behind the vanes, that is okay, and helps keep the vanes outwards in addition to the rotational forces that naturally fling the vanes outwards. But, once you start to collect any liquids, behind the vanes, that is where me and so many others run into crashes, or failure of the machine. We have tried to vent this trapping system to both the intake side to suck any liquids out of on the exhaust side to be pushed out from the linear motion of the vanes telescopic travel in a pumping action... Even tried to just vent these trapping areas to external areas, for collection just to try to get past the issue... I have tried through holes vents long wise in the vanes themselves to allow the trapped liquids to relieve into the front side of the vanes for additional lubrication on the walls, and likewise on the aft side of the vanes in efforts to lubricate the next following vane.... In either of those, we get hovering of the vanes at higher rpms as the edge is trying to either collect/scrape/scoop up the previously laid oil/fuel and grit and results in HP and rpm loss, and after extended periods of endurance runs, hammering effect of the walls, does what we call "catipillar walling" of harmonic wearing in a sign wave and that creates a nasty problem that compounds on itself to destruction very quickly.... These units are so much fun, but I am personally burnt out.. the math mathematics that goes into the volume of the wedges to intake/exhaust to the dimensions of the vanes length, width, height and or length to thickness issue. Based on over 200 material iterations in some base models, and discover some work great some not, but it just keeps the battle of wear factor to life expectancy of the vanes and housing wall(s).. the saving grace is the ease of machining, as compared to the exceptionally tight tolerance of the Wankle housing to rotor dimensions to aid in prevention wedging or crashing.. these vane motors are pretty forgiving in manufacturing... Allot of work, (as you stated) is still needed by somebody who has more money then me.. I am just a guy in a machine shop playing part time on these, in fact, I haven't touched them in about a year or so... I am not saying anything you said is wrong, but more over, agreeing with you, there is allot of potential for these designs, but somebody who has more money then me can play with more specialized materials / alloys, and simulation software better then mine to hone every bit of active and passive friction out of the entire rotational cycle while incorporating balance as a whole.. Oh, and another crazy issue, leeching, from a combusted chamber, leeching under the wiping edge to the yet not combusted air/fuel ... With a mass damper damage happens in the idea to just carry the rotation on over past the preignition leeched chamber with bent vanes, or snapped axle shaft or ruptured wall.. that is always a fun day and loud too... With out a flywheel aid to dampen things out harmonically, the motors rattle themselves into shavings and scrape themselves to death. Smaller power tools vane pumps are stable, but the moment they step up to combustion, a whole other character of issues happens... Which is what the one photo of the multi-vane rotor was trying to deal with I think it was a (20 vane rotor) also trying even number of vanes and odd number of vanes all trying to calm down the harmonics or vibrations that rattle these into destruction... I wish more people could put more effort and money into this, venture.. The biggest unit I have that is still working is 5 inches, and offer (0.2 HP) @15,000 rpm .and is on a bicycle and geared super low and allot of backfiring from unspent fuel but does work just not very good but is on the threshold of not ripping itself apart.. Maybe this winter, I can get back on these
Thank you for sharing this. What occurred to me was, why not make these engines fixed RPM and have the vanes mechanically move along a internal slot or track that matches the "cylinder wall" thus maintaining a perfect distance at all times.
Reposting this here: This may be a stupid question, but... why can't it just be a screw? Why does all of the action have to occur on one plane? With a screw design, each event happens in its own sperate plane so then you don't have the problem with these vanes moving in weird ways. I'm probably missing something (I'm not an engineer, but I work with them!) but I just wanted to ask that question.
I think that the REAL solution is not to eliminate reciprocation, but eliminate rotation. Instead of wheels, we should have large legs that hammer the car down the road.
Your video caught my attention as I designed this exact engine 40 years ago while in high school. I grew up on a farm and we fixed everything and I knew every part in every engine we had. I liked the idea of the rotary engines and first is how to lub it. I tossed that aside and though do it like a two stroke. Ok that will work now how long will it last. After seeing OIL pumps fail that just pumps oil I began to have doubts that it would last any time. Now the emissions have be be cleaned up. Best is cylinder and odd shaped combustion chambers do not burn well in the wedges and they are just there. I lost interest in it and have lost my original drawings somewhere in the many places I have been. Thanks for the video.
as a regular joe i also see a problem with vane reliability. carbon will get them stuck as heck and the forces pressing on them will bend the fk out of them. as for lubrication, same as 2 stroke. crosschamber isolation? same as 2 stroke. doesn't have to be perfect to run. it just has to be good enough.
Pretty well the Exact same problems in ANY engine . Piston Rings and Periphery Seals live in that same , Low lubrication , High Scuff environment that the Vanes would be dealing with , so SIMILAR SOLUTIONS . Micro porosity in the Chamber wall to retain an Oil film and Correct choice of Materials for the Chamber surface and Vanes . The centrifugal forces in the Rotor would provide sufficient Oil pressure to deal with peripheral oiling without the need for an Oil Pump . Rotor just needs Roller Bearings and LP oil supply . Just simply provide small gallery ways through the Rotor assembly that lead to the Vanes . Only need to be quite tiny And a tiny amount of Chamber Bleed would not really matter considering the Cycles adjacent to each . Another Engineer speaking here .
It's like this for all motors, what creates energy can also use it and vice versa. Well it's not exactly like this essentially these machines are all energy converters. I like a lot the analogy because it also works with electric motors, and of course this is idea behind hybrid cars and regenerative breaking.
requires oxygen to explode. iCE are air pumps with addition of explosion. Rocket engines have fuel that supplies the O2 or its injected for thrust. Jet engines add fuel to compressed O2
My prediction of an ironic future timeline (which actually exist in some parallel universe, of course): Tesla having fallen on hard times as the EV market has gone bust, comes out with a hybrid using a perfected rotary vane engine and goes on to become the Toyota of global auto industry
For a few minutes I was thinking this was a beautifully simple concept. Then the issues of lubrication and stresses on the vanes brought me back to earth. Nice mental exercise.
@@brayhill Yeah, high friction on the sides of vanes, and typically sacrificial vane surface. There might be a way to deal with it, but I can’t visualize it. 4 strokes us a sacrificial ring in a cast iron or sleeved block and last upwards of 100k miles, but don’t have much side force on the ring.
@@drovid008 Well to be fair, if Vane engines came first we'd look at pistons like they were garbage because the research into them would have been low. I feel like the issue of counteracting centripetal forces wouldn't be too difficult to counteract or account for. For me lubrication seems like the confusing part.
Bull s...t. rotary engine is uncomfortable, unreliable, way too noisy... I can go on and on. Mazda was a hair tread away from declaring bankruptcy after they began to sell their rx5 if I remember correctly. They still replace most of the rotary engines
They were, but my 1981 RX7 ran 250K miles of my abuse before I finally sold it and it was still running well, though not quite as strongly as when new. That little 12A was a lot stronger than the car it was installed in!
Incorrect. I had three wankel engines in three different cars, sold each of them running perfectly with 150k miles at the point of sale. That apex seal problem was solved in 1983 and never caused another problem again in the dozen years these engines were sold in cars.
17:07 When you said "Roy Hartfield", that caught me off-guard for a second - because I'm currently a student at Auburn University, and I thought "wait, THAT Dr. Hartfield??" Sure enough, it's the same guy, and I walk past his office every day! He's one of the aerospace engineering professors in Davis Hall. If you want to ask him some questions, perhaps you could reply with them here and I can stop by his office to pass them on in-person to get his response!
This sounds like an incredible follow up video in the making. Hope people bump your comment and this gets taken seriously. I think this is a phenomenal idea!
The Wankel engine has one crown the sliding vane hasn't taken yet: It worked to the point it reached production level to be used on real life, day to day applications.
Yeah, this design has been well established in liquid pumps forever. If it was some kind of illuminati silver bullet, someone would have put it in *something* commercial as a combustion engine before now.
@@jeffh8803 Like the US Navy did, when they acquired the only Rotary Vane engine made by an actual company back in 2005... General Vortex Energy.... Patent "sliding blade heat engine"... Navy gave them a total of 3 grants, over 5 years, totalling over $5 million.... a 25KW (40HP) and a 125KW (160HP) engine was developed, and tested at SWRI, achieving 61% BTE. The real question is what would happen if some carmaker released cars with engines even close to 60% BTE. Since that is 3 times the efficiency of piston engines... global economy crash... the demand of oil/prices is everything. Rotary vane engines won't be available until world-wide economics can handle the efficiency.
The Wankel Rotary Engine cars really suck to own. I worked on one once to replace a rotor with a used one & new seals years ago. Just so the customer could sell the car...
About 2 decades ago as a mechanical design draftsman with equivalent of 2nd year mech eng and also obsessed with the idea of a better ICE with lower weight, smoother operation and torque, I came up with several iterations (unfortunately only in digital form, no contacts, money or time to do what I wanted to do which was get a prototype built). There were some differences between mine and the design shown in this video. One being that the rotor isn’t circular but elliptical and the vanes in mine were located not in the spinning rotor but in the casing which solves quite a few problems and allows for a sturdier, precision cam-operated vane with lighter sliding seals against the rotor. Also, the exhaust gases vent through ports that open in the side of the housing, ensuring almost complete venting of exhaust gases. One problem with this type of engine is that combustion always occurs in the same location, and the housing will get extremely hot there, but modern materials and cooling systems should cope. I’d also love to see this type of engine happen. I honestly think that this is one of the many things that humanity has failed to exploit to our advantage.
Could be 100x more, the 4 vanes is just arbitrary if you don't need to actually build it. You could have more combustion and compression chambers too. As long as you don't need to build it. Anyway this is used in some automotive vacuum pumps, but without a spring(rides on the wall back and forth). But who cares it you can't make it work in practice.;
@@lassikinnunen What does 100X more vanes mean if you are not making the engine? And who says no one is making the engine? Or will ever make the engine? He covered all these things in the video, sir.
So the problems of making jet turbine engines - which are rotary engines with (many) protruding vanes - are all simpler to solve than this rotary vane engine ? Hmmm…. Every day thousands of people are transported reliably in vehicles using engines vastly more complex than this rotary vane engine as intended for automotive vehicles. But, of course, the engineering is much tougher to solve for the latter.
@@TheSulross Do the turbines move in and out and have force against the outside walls? How much maintenance do jet turbines require compared to wankel and regular 4 stroke engines?
I checked with my step-son who is highly regarded in the field of engine design. He agreed with the multiple potential benefits. He also agreed with you flagging the seals as the unsolved problem. He said no-contact gas seals using ceramic piezo-electric actuators in jet engines seal a constant-size gap. That is trivial compared to sealing the variable-diameter vanes. It would be difficult to extend the vanes outward to a consistent length at a um tolerances. In addition, they would have to do this while being exposed to both the full heat of combustion and the full speed of the rotor. I learned a lot from this episode. Keep'm com'n.
@@mikeybdy1 If it's a wedge, I don't think you could get a true seal at full retraction, which appears to be required to get this to work. Would need to see a model of it running to be sure of that.
@@KindredBrujah what if instead of using a spring to push against the walls, the vanes are mechanically linked with the position of the shaft? like some way to have the distance of the vane away from the center of the shaft linked with its rotational position, whether by gears, bearings rolling around shaped pieces of metal, etc.
There are three things to look for in any new miracle engine technology: 1- How is it cooled. 2- How is it sealed. 3- How is it lubricated. Cooling this thing would be similar to a Wankle so not that big an issue. Sealing this thing would likely be exponentially more difficult than with a Wankle which already has issues with apex seals. In addition to the issues faced by Wankels the amount of travel of the vanes at any significant RPM would likely get into the same issues as seen with early valve springs. Lubrication would require some oil burning (bad for emmisions) and lubrication of the sliding vanes under high temperature and pressure.
You are right about that. If only there were a new type of turbine engine that addresses all that and much much more recently disclosed in a MOTORTREND article!
@@alkaholic4848 yes actually that has been done in a successful vane engine, very surprising you were able to visualize that. They also use vane rollers on the bottom sides of the vanes, that roll in a groove in the front and rear covers of the engine.
Excellent video! I’m a mechanical engineer and have been involved in compressors and gas pumping equipment for use in chemical plants and oil refineries for 50 years. The achilles heel for vane pumps is not just vane wear against the compression housing, but also vane blade failure, spring fatigue, and the buildup of combustion byproducts and sludge in the vane slots on the rotor causing the vanes to stick. Though not a thing for automotive use, vane compressors are still used in industry with some regularity and many attempts have been made to make them more reliable. But still, this technology takes a backseat to more reliable designs - with all their weaknesses - such as reciprocating compressors. Even in aviation, most light aircraft use vane style vacuum pumps to generate vacuum for flight instruments. But, they too are quite prone to failure which requires two pumps to be installed for backup. Someone may solve these problems with materials and reciprocating vane design improvements, but it is still on the horizon and not here yet.
I had exactly the same idea when I tore down a refrigeration compressor 30 years ago. When I delved deeper I discovered a fella in Rochester NY fitted one to a motorcycle in the 1930s & ran it for a week before concluding that it wore out too quickly. It could be made to work but you'd have to lubricate it the same way as a 2 stroke engine, but then you'd have problems with exhaust emissions.
Exactly. These alternative designs pretty much always try to skip design factors that are instrumental in making piston engines balanced in terms of power, flexibility, reliability, efficiency, and complexity.
"Things tend to not exist and not be used.... before they are.... existing... and used...." This is the kind of wisdom that brings me back to d4a, thank you 😂
Except that’s not true. In general, things get invented before they get made. Imagine showing an ICU to a medieval person he would say „great! Now how do we build this thing?“ and you’d have to explain everything from basic physics to metallurgy to them. Da Vinci also invented the aircraft centuries before anyone could build it. The reality is: if it would’ve been possible, someone would have tried it already. But nobody did.
@@pengstirbkuchen5987 Just because something invented and a well design in the real world doesn't mean it will get adopted. Adoption requires enough people getting on board, all the kinks worked out, and the supply chain to migrate. There are a bunch of technologies that are known to not be optimal, but just good enough that to change it is seen as not worth it.
@@gljames24 But these rotatry vane wankers can't even be arsed to make a simple little prototype, they only make cartoons. What they'll find is any carbon buildup on the vanes will keep the vanes from responding quickly enough to properly hug the walls
I love your channel and you are so gifted at helping the average mechanic understand the concepts of so many different designs that I can’t help but think you could design something to overcome the obstacles to the vane engine…
Actually, the best type of internal combustion engine is neither a Wankel nor a Rotary Vane engine. It's a Turbine engine, for all the reasons you described. A Rotary Vane engine is interesting, but I'm wondering what the wear characteristics would be like. The vane being a long lever arm is good for torque, but it also means it will need to resist a lot of side-load forces while still moving smoothly in and out to maintain the seal with the sidewall. They work fine for air tools because the pressurized air is providing a steady pressure with a low impact compared to the shock front of a fuel detonation. No contact seals work for Turbines because the blades aren't moving in and out. There's no travel, just thermal expansion to compensate for. It's not feasible to maintain a gap like that while the vanes are moving in and out at the rotation speed of the engine.
Turbine engines have been used in the past and are currently being used on the MTT Y2K motorcycle. Major down side is it a major hog when it comes to fuel getting roughly 4mpg city and not much better on the highway.
As a machinist, I have to say this: this design is neat on paper but would absolutely grenade itself. Anytime you add a spring loaded dragon into a rotating assembly, the centripetal forces will cause problems, in addition to the fact that there is not enough structural material to keep those fins from bending themselves out of the central assembly. It is wildly impractical.
Plus as other commenter brought up about liquids getting behind the vanes... since they aren't 1 part, of course liquids are expected to go there and then pressure would just be way too high, making the friction against the walls be just too much to be usable... it's the sort of thing that looks good and that will work, but once you take a step back and think about it just for a second you realize that's not going to work...
@@Cuestrupaster why not design the vanes to have oils behind it? basically rectangular piston rings, and oil jets behind them making sure they stay lubricated? using the re-compression of the vanes to push the excess oil back through the system. structural issues aside regarding how thin the vanes would be and how they would be mounted, enabling fluids to pass behind them would probably assist greatly. Disclaimer: I'm not an engineer, and my thinking likely is heavily flawed.
yeah, materials-wise, this set up just wont last, in a larger engine tho, say a ship, the issues present would have enough room for solutions like rolling guides for the vanes and enough material thickness to handle the combustion pushing the vanes sideways in their channels and enough surface area for a 'bearing surface' along the vane ends and combustion surface of the block, but there's still the issue of an enormous rotor weight, probably negating most of the simplicity-efficiency along with vane drag.
wouldn't it be easier to sacrifice some of that weight to power ration to fix these problems by using denser metals? and bulkier engine, plus springs will not be a problem as at high speeds the centripetal force of the crank shaft will not put pressure on the springs function and at low speeds a heavy duty tungsten spring will work fine
Sometimes it scares me how much in sync we are ! I’m literally working on a Rotary Vane design, a pneumatic one for now. It is so hard to seal it properly!
Small air tools use fiber vanes. Something like "tipping" the vanes may work for you. Super fine finish on the cylinder wall is important. Maybe bronze if it's only air
I wonder if you can create enough compression to use diesel fuel. Also springs for the vanes would have to be able to withstand the heat. If one of them fails no more combustion. One question would the carbon created from the combustion be used as a lubricant?
Back in school we designed and built a rough prototype of a compressed air powered scooter. Our motor was based on a rotory vane pump and built into the wheel hub. It was kind of inside-out for lack of a better term, with the ouside rim acting as the rotor. We had 3 different rings, the two outer rings were higher torque for acceleration, and the smaller one on the inside was for cruising.
I am 76 years old engineering designer, I designed an engine like that when I was 15 years old. Then later I found out thats how positive displacement hydraulic pumps works
Also air motors and hydraulic motors. I have used all three in real world commercial machines I have designed. This video misses that vane rotor assemblies are relatively low torque, require vane lubrication, and are very sensitive to contamination. I used pumps like the Vickers V20 series for low noise circuits in an operator's cab or for air handler drives. Good stuff, but has to be applied correctly.
D4E talking about unconventional looking engine designs? Sign me up!! Every time you upload a video about neat little engines and stuff like this it makes my day :)
You might want to check patents as this might be infringing on the patent for a rotary vane pump. I ran into this and was notified by the patent office. I also know of a better design than this. Just saying.
I'm not a physicist or engineer, but the first thing that jumps out to me on this is that a vane type oil pump doesn't have to address heat from combustion. That floating vane will have the full heat from combustion, and it looks to me like it has a very limited time to shed that heat. That means the metallurgy of the vane and rotor must be able to deal with that heat without the vane expanding and binding in the rotor. As soon as you introduce contactless sealing such as an air gap or some piezo sealing, you've further reduced ability to shed heat because you no longer have contact with the mass of the static housing.
Yeah it seems like the vanes would need their own "piston rings" to allow for expansion. But lateral torque on a vane that needs very low friction just sounds like a mess. As soon as you put a decent amount of side pressure your vanes bind and you lose tons of power when the housing shoves the vanes back inside. Also I have doubts that you wouldn't have friction issues with springs that are stiff enough to keep a full seal reciprocating twice per revolution. I like the idea and the problems it's meant to solve. I think theoretically it's strong, but friction and thermal expansion would make it hard to employ.
I think the Vanes parts problem can easily be solved by using a high-melting point metal such as thugsten. However i assume this would mean more free-play would be require to ensure the vane doesn't seize from thermal expansion. Also, i think with a design like this you could easily have the center of the shaft be hollow to pass the intake or coulant through to help further cool down the vanes
you could make to vanes hinged flaps so expansion wouldn't be such an issue, would also solve issues with lateral loads. you introduce other issues though like hinge mechanisms in the combustion area. theoretically though, it would have the same time to cool as a normal piston, yes it would be subject to combustion temperature once per revolution, but you could run it at half speed for the same power output.
@@nikeschndGood point, you could possibly have some kind of water cooling mechanism inside them but that makes them weaker. Coat them in Gold would be another option. I would personally still go with rollers on the ends, I would also only have them compress once per revolution, keeping it fully extended at the exhaust / intake section, would that cause problems? Not sure how much exhaust gas would continue over or if that would cause problems. Although you could theoretically use a vein pump further down the exhaust and intake pipes to cause a vacuum which pulls the exhaust gasses out and pushes fresh air in powered by the engine.
The vanes could be controlled by wheels but the vane guide needs to be inside the rotary mechanism. I can see that there may be problems with expansion and the vanes would need to be made of something like titanium to withstand the temperature. So two thoughts on this: first, the engine would probably be very inefficient when cold before the vanes expand to working temperature and a decent seal; second, such an efficient engine could make use of lower combustion temperature fuels like alcohols, thereby reducing thermal stress.
Big problem is the lateral forces on the vanes are so large that a great spring force would be required to overcome the friction caused in the slots and prevent binding and premature failure . As the vanes extend , even the smallest gap between them and the slots will cause the vanes to lean forward and bind . This “rocking “ motion of the vanes would be worst at full vane extension . I can’t imagine any lubrication system that could counter this , even with ridiculously oil rich fuel . Springs strong enough to reduce binding must lead to gouging of the combustion chamber. The thing would chatter like crazy under any real load .This design can only work in CAD with theoretical materials , lubrication and zero tolerances
Even worst than possible chatter, would be the possibility of destructive failure where one or more vanes impinged on the air ports. The entire engine casing would likely shatter.
Yeah. A sliding vane is going to be incredibly unreliable unless you happen to have perfect combustion all the time, every time. Otherwise you're going to have stiction and carbon lock like Wankels deal with. Plus the torque on the vanes are going to be under *extreme* torque during combustion, and that same force of the combustion is going to introduce vibrations every time it hits. You'd need to have at least two rotors firing opposite each other to cancel out those harmonics or this simply won't be as smooth as he asserts. And because the engine makes 4 cycles in one rotation the force is only going to exist in 90 (and really probably only ~30) degrees of this rotation and you can't just offset the next rotor to do that, you'd need to have the next rotor housing flipped and rotated to cancel out that vibration. One rotation per full cycle sounds nice until you're doing harmonics and NVH assessments, then you realize how much those "long" stroke times allow for timing of the whole rotational assembly to cancel out the other vibrations in the engine. This is just a glorified air motor with a lot more problems introduced.
Expand the tip of the vane so it's not a point contact or like a tangent of a rounded tip. Put a curve on the vane so during the combustion phase the high pressure gas is helping to push the vane out. Expand the size of the central shaft without scaling the size of the vane up so more of the vane is inside the shaft extending the area of the force. All ideas that might be solutions if someone spent the time and money to research, simulate and prototype a rotary vane engine.
Honestly, the entire time, I was thinking that all of the "problems" he was describing with current engines have already been solved, and we did it in the 30s. It's called a turbine, otherwise known as a jet engine.
And when they shatter they will destroy the engine. This is nothing more than a vane pump in reverse. I worked on them 30 years ago. When they bust they bust big!
They follow an elliptical path. Look at a Gnome piston engine used in some WW1 aircraft. The pistons appear to reciprocate but they actually follow a purely circular path.
No they do not. F = mV^2, they will not go back in real scale and rotations. If that is not enough - there is friction that you can not be compensated with oil by design. If that is also not enough, somehow - there is heat disbalance that will inevitably either lock vanes or enforce gaps that will let all the pressure out. This whole video should've been an April fools' joke...
I think this reveals one of the big dilemmas of engineering: Do you start with something fundamentally inefficient but easier to make and then work to optimize it as much as possible, or do you try to make the theoretically optimal solution, even if it is extremely hard to make it work, let alone work reliably? Going down the first path can leave you in a technological dead-end, while the latter could result in a project being dead in the water.
The answer is going to first principle and figure out what the best engine is, not what the best combustion engine is. Electric motors and batteries are the already established solution. Do your resaerch, invest in Tesla.
It depends on the materials and manufacturing technologies available. Of course there were ideas about turbocharged engines and aircraft and ships even back in the first days of the industrial revolution, born from from equally clever minds. Making them work is a whole other matter, because if you only had wrought iron and low pressure steam engines, flying is a pipe dream.
Agreed. The most "efficient" helicopter design is two counter-rotating blades from the same hub. But the complexity is enormous. Sikorsky basically said "to hell with efficiency, just stop the rotation caused by one blade using a tail rotor." Yes, the tail rotor eats up a lot of power. But it worked.
@@stanleygagner so which is fundamentally inefficient? If you look at the comparable configurations in pumps both are efficient, but in different use cases.
Exactly the same principle as in chemical processes: do you optimise the chemistry (what chemists do) or optimise the profitability (what engineers do). Virtually all commercial plants use an iteration of the latter. Pharmaceutical companies tend to use an iteration of the first.
My first car purchase for myself was a used Mazda Rx3 station wagon and it was so fun to drive with it's manual transmission, that a couple years later, I bought a brand new Mazda Rx4 pickup truck, the first year they were released, again with a manual transmission. I doubt anything could have been more fun to drive for an 17 year old teen, with it's yellow paint and black racing stripes, N50 x 14 inch diameter fat tires and soft bed cover. It looked great, and ran like a top, until it started burning a quart of oil with almost every tank of gas I put into it due to worn rotor tip seals, and trying to find mechanics outside of the dealership to rebuild rotary engines, was almost impossible and cost about $1,500 in 1977. If Masda came out with another rotary engine vehicle with even just slightly longer lasting rotor tip seals, and a bit cheaper rebuild price, I would buy a rotary again. They are just that much fun to drive, because the horsepower curve is so different than a piston engine engine.
I designed a few engines like this... and for several reasons, they don't work well. #1- inherently low duty cycle, due to dedicated combustion/exhaust surfaces. Heat build-up in these surfaces presents an issue with both degradation and uneven expansion across the radial plane #2- surface area to volume ratio makes thermal efficiency a challenge #3- lubrication issues abound... with the only reasonable solution being vanes made of a self-lubricating wear material, and requiring frequent inspection/service/replacement Of all the issue presented, there were a few I resolved. 1- utilizing technical ceramic (zirconia) for the casing and central rotor, relieved numerous cooling/friction issues... but the expense isn't feasible for mass production, and thermal shock limitations all but eliminate the possibility of use in frigid climates #2- using arched vanes made of dense carbon graphite, and contouring the outer casing to permit the movement, such that one side is extending while the other is retracted, significantly mitigated vane control issues. Conversely, this created a tuning issue, as it altered the displacement volume between alternate vanes. It also did nothing to mitigate the load induced on the outer case friction surfaces, which increases at the square of RPM. All this being said, a number of well-funded projects have addressed the fool's folly of the rotary vane engine. Most recently, RadMax Rand Cam engine oriented vane actuation along the axis of the engine, as opposed to radial extension. This allowed engineering around the dynamic load of the vanes in a far more manageable window. The engine ran, and was very smooth... but required more vanes to allow more efficient compression ratios. This presented two problems... spark management/delivery for gasoline, and injection issues for diesel operation. To my knowledge, only one successful prototype was built, and progress halted for numerous reasons. Nearly every internal surface required precision machining, thermal management still created issues of uneven expansion, serviceability of nearly any component required complete disassembly, and packaging for any reasonable duty cycle proved non-beneficial. As stated, numerous companies have seen significant success in pneumatic expansion applications... but expansion motors don't face the thermal management issues of an ICE. To my knowledge, the most successful private attempt at creating a viable rotary vane engine, was documented on the RUclips channel by RotaryICEman. Despite numerous running designs, and favorable efficiency readings, reasonable success was never found.
Great insight, my first look at the design sees a huge issue in angular vane deflection and huge wear issues in the vane and rotor guide assembly. Vane pumps are one thing, but with such loads in a gosoline engine would see a significant load increase on the vanes. One thing that comes to mind is a perpendicular roller follower arrangement to absorb this angular deflection issue as the combustion pressure increases. Thermal management now becomes a decent challenge.
the answer to ur problem and solution i believe is ... PROBLEM: take spring loaded vanes on springs as bullet in barrel hence there has to be a muzzle velocity i.e. the tension in spring to keep it hinged with wall at say 12k rpm .. the springs tension is not enough to sustain that muzzle velocity in and out while spinning at say 12k rpm ... SOLUTION: sol i believe is to create wedge near top of vane where part of incoming liquid tucks itself under it and pushes the vane up along with spring's effort... or the vane has to be a say perm-magnet and and there be a 2nd electro-magnet in the walls to pull the vane towards walls at muzzle-velocity required at any of the say same 12k rpm lone spin/pass. I am using electro in walls as heat kills magnetism and perm-in vane as it will be hard but still protected in the hunk of round block...
"If it is so good why isn't it being used already?" Goddamn right. This is the first question to ask and 99.9% of the time the answer is out there, and has been for decades. More efficient, smoother, yup. No quibble there. The problem arises when you try to keep an internal combustion vane engine alive long enough to make it to the grocery store and back. Vanes make decent pumps and air motors as you noted. The problem is for a given vane depth/length from hub to chamber wall there are pressure limitations. Vane engines kill the actual vanes with heat, lack of lubrication, and side loading of the vane in the hub/crankshaft. Sealing the outer diameter (like an apex seal) is not too tough as compared to keeping the vane from killing itself in a hostile work environment. No doubt on paper it is great, and it has its advantages, but the real world is harsh.
what about an exchange service ? you make it to the store , get your groceries AND a replacement car to get you back home , where another replacement car awaits 😂
@@florin-titusniculescu5871If it were just possible to replace the vane unit by removing a few bolts then it would still be terrible, but a far bit less so, right?
Yeah, this engine design has been around for decades and is not really a new idea, comparing it to a completely new tech like he did is insanely disingenuous
Pretty much this. The reason why we stick with 'inefficient' designs is because of durability. Nobody wants to be bringing their car in for engine service every 10k miles.
I drew a picture of that engine in the 12th grade when I first read about sliding vane supercharger's. It's just a sliding vane supercharger run backward, and there's actually a more workable version which attaches the vanes to an offset hub instead of having them drag on the walls. But they problem is the vanes still need to drag on the slotted hub that they are pushing around.
The Ariel Hipercar (yes that's it's actual name) is a prototype which is getting close to being put in production and has a turbine engine in it. Granted, the turbine doesn't propell the car, but rather functions as a range extender. A very effective range extender though.
@@brendonwood7595Sure. For range extenders, they still seem to be a very interesting avenue of investigation, though, since they don't have the same constraints of needing to run in synchrony with the wheels. I see two other potential problems with them, too. One is the exhaust temperature, which is very high; two of the examples we have of vehicles with this configuration (a 1950s or 60s car and a 90s(?) motorcycle) were known to melt the bumpers of the cars behind them at red lights. Another that I'm less sure about is the strength of the bearings when used in vehicles that experience significant bumps and vibrations in their intended use, like off-road or some industrial vehicles. Highly efficient turbines can tend to be a little delicate, I believe, and I'm not sure how much they'd like intense, abrubt movements on different axes.
Chrysler did it in the 60's and solved almost every problem but they couldn't quite get there. With today's technology we could. The two problems were emissions and turbine lag. Lag could be solved with an electric transmission which is a proven technology in locomotives and emissions technology is just better today.
@@brendonwood7595 The railroad industry has solved that for us, electric transmission. They use it because internal combustion cannot match the low RPM torque of steam which is very important in locomotives but it could also be used to solve turbine lag as well by combining it with a small high amp battery or a supercapacitor. As a bonus the generator and electric motors are lighter than a transmission.
My Grandfather, Robert Williams, designed and patented several of these in the 1960s and 1970s. It was difficult to get vanes which would seal and also resist wear, not just at the tips, but in the slots where they slid. They got a lot of leverage pressure on them, too.
Literally any uneducated person could try to replicate it or make a video about how good it is. Problem is, reality and wet dreams of incompetent people are incompatible. Same as eccentric force application and no vibration. Same as keeping heat disbalance and constant gaps. Same as high torque and frictionless moving gates.
Before I make a comment, I want to say that I love your videos. You do an excellent job of explaining things. As others have noted the flywheel needs to be better balanced or it will shake itself apart. The flywheel is setup for only a single ignition event per rotation and you need at least six ignition events per rotation. What I haven’t seen anyone else mention is that it looks like the output of the exhaust is aimed near the top of the carburetor. The problem with this is, as the engine is still experimental, you will probably have incomplete combustion inside of the engine meaning that at a minimum you will have hot exhaust gases hitting the top of the carburetor. This is dangerous. It needs a exhaust pipe to direct the exhaust gases in a safer direction. A six inch long tube of the proper diameter would probably do.
I designed but never built a similar engine in 1976. It had 7 vanes with combustion occurring in them every other cycle. This would have kept the engine temperature stable. Projected HP around 250, at 8K rpm. My father passed before we could build it, together.
as soon as I saw the design I thought the big problem is going to be the vane system, sealing and friction, also the lateral force on the vanes, I wish I could research this Idea since i'm in my last year of mechanical engineering bachelor and I'm searching for new ideas in the industry. this channel has been a great learning source for me.
@@corpsiecorpsie_the_original its possibly the oldest attempt at making a rotary engine, as its the simplest and most obvious route to take... and they deemed it as useless at least 150 years ago... people seem to be oblivious to the fact that pressure acts in ALL directions equally... theres no preference for rotating one way versus the other. and as the pressure only has a tiny area of the protruding vane to act against, and as the pressure acts equally on the vane at the other end of any chamber formed between them, the only force available to produce rotation is the DIFFERENCE between the two areas... the pressure doesnt miraculously act on only one vane... and to cap it off, most of the pressure acts upon the rotor and the casing, RADIALLY... all that does is produce pressure on the bearings... the "mcewan rota mota" was an interesting take on the idea... was only ever a steam/air/hydraulic motor/compressor/pump though... and lamplough used the same sort of design in his radial twostrokes for the scavenging blower... i cant find anything online about either except for a reference back to the very books i have describing them... as a pump? theyre ideal, they convert torque to pressure really well... they fall flat when asked to do the reverse.
As a professor who has tried to design a real-world vane engine, you have correctly identified the main problem - centrifugal force on the vanes. I vividly recall drawing up what would be a great little 5 lb 50 horsepower engine - and then calculating that each of my 24 vanes would have 5 tons of tangential force on the outer chamber. Why 24 vanes? You touched on, but did not develop the side forces on the vanes. The high pressure in one chamber compared to low pressure in the next makes sealing hard and it also will deflect the vanes or make them :stick" in their slots. Going to more vanes solves both of these issues because it reduces the pressure differential on the vanes. This also allows the use of thinner vanes - with less centrifugal forces resulting. Vane pumps work well if they are pumping lubricating fluid. They work poorly if not. Combustion is the enemy of lubrication. But yes, I agree that if you can solve the vane engine, the piston engine will die! One more thing. The active clearance on a jet engine is against a round, constant radius surface. The non-constant radius outer surface on a vane engine is an almost infinitely more complex problem.
Couldn't you use counterweights to reduce the effect of centrifugal force on the vanes? I think I remember reading using something like that to achieve higher RPMs in pumps.
A few things I have to say to the last part, the why it is not done yert: The combustion side excerts pressure on the vane holding cylinder in the middle. This results in asymetrical pressure on the shaft. Wich means asymetrical wear on the shafts bearings. Wich leads to the whole thing not being able to hold a 3 micrometer seal after just a few hours of running at most. Even with hightech ceramic bearings and so on. You would need at least a 4 disc version with 90° staggered combustion chambers to balance out the pressure on the shaft overall. But it would still lead to deformation of the shaft in the long run, again for the whole thing not being able to hold its seal. And it would be no issue if the piezo actuors could be used to pull the vanes in, and push them out, and basically hold them at the correct position all the time. The "problem" here is, that the forces acting on the vanes are vastly asymetrical, and thus holding a balancing act of 3 micrometers would be all but impossible, especially if you factor in external vibration sources like a rough road surface, the rough tire surface and the suspension and engine mounts directing miniscule (but larger than 3 micrometers) vibrations into the engine block. The acutors would have to get input signals and center these vanes at a rate, that can not be achieved if you factor in a sensor to detect them, a processor to calculate the movement, signal traveling speed at 80% the speed of light, and the acutuator acting on the vane to compensate externally induced vibration. Also the shaft in the middle must run in its bearing basically without any kind of tolerances, maybe in the nanometer range, to not translate any lateral movement onto the spinning disc and the vanes. The reason why it works so well in a Wankel is the excentric shaft and the moving contact point on the gearing of the rotor. In theory, this could be built at an anstronomic cost (3 micrometers are higher tolerances than in F1 engines or the most sophisticated Jet Turbines, a modern car engine has 50 - 100 micrometers of tolerance between the piston and the cylinders, and the sprung ring running a oil film to center it dynamically constantly), and run as a single disct for hours, as a quad disc for maybe days until the warping of the shaft creates imbalance, and suspended on fluid seals or something, because the people walking by this engine would cause enough vibration to decenter the vanes and make them impact or leak gas. Or a truck driving by the whole building. Thus: nice in theory, but with current technology and most likely ever physically achieveable technology (signly travel time at light speed as limit) not achievable for a vehicle engine. And since the buffins at large motor corperations would also be able to think of that in a heartbeat, its the reason why none of them ever tried, and most likely never will. The only way I can imagine to get the thing practial is pretty huge gaps, and a hydroseal by having the tips of the vanes expell high pressure liquid like oil or fuel, wich would be lost quiet a lot, and create a high torque, compact engine with horrible fuel economy or if you use oil, economic impact. But it would work (with piezo actuators holding a few hundret micrometer gap filled with fluid, wich can handle the warping of the shaft and shaft bearing for a longer time, and compensate vibrations).
Would it be plausible to electromagnetically "suspend" the shaft so that asymmetrical bearing wear could be mitigated and tighter tolerances of the vanes could be maintained?
@@DerSpeggn Then let's forget about automotive use... What about a boiler to run a steam version of this where each rotor has two symmetrical power and exhaust chambers as well as multiple (to a power of 2) LARGE displacement rotors for balance while running at low RPMs for use as either an industrial stationary engine or for large tonnage nautical use like freighters and cruise ships? With each rotor having eight power impulses per rotation it should make MASSIVE amounts of smooth torque.
Just FYI, pumps at gas stations are typically NOT vane pumps. Vane pumps do exist in what are known as suction systems, where the pump is in the dispenser (as opposed to the tank), but these are usually really old systems with 1 or 2 dispensers, and you will recognize them by the caucophany of noise and vibration coming from them. The vast majority of public gas stations use submerged centrifugal pumps in the tanks.
The private gas pumps at my place of work are vane pumps. They are noisy and vibrate like crazy. They've got little phenolic keys that act like sacrificial clutches to save the motor when they inevitably lock up. GM uses variable displacement vane oil pumps on some of their engines. I doubt they make anywhere near as much noise and vibration.
I think he meant as the measuring device in the petrol pump, as opposed to providing the lifting from the tank. More a metering device than actual pump.
@@BestKiteboardingOfficial The design being used for metering gasoline would be inaccurate. I service Gilbarco dispensers, and their meters use 4 pistons laid out like a rotary airplane engine. Wayne dispensers have 2 pistons, I believe. However, the high flow truck diesel use Liquid Controls (LC) meters which may be rotor/ vane. They are expensive and never seem to break.
@@garyhooper1820 That can be true, but there are solutions. Newer stores may have 2 pumps in a tank, and they may have variable speed motors to compensate for high demand.
*16:40** I WAS LITERALLY SHOUTING "ROLLS ROYCE DO THIS WITH JET ENGINES"* at the computer when you said it - I had a personal tour of the RR Derby factory in about 2004 The single best thing ever in my life - utterly amazing. The grow the compressor blades as a single crystal
@@removechan10298 YEAH I know. They crate a ceramic mould with a long spiral on the end, they drop a tiny perfect crystal of metal, these were titanium, into the bottom of the spiral and then the pur in liquid titanium and then it goes in an oxygen free autoclave where they cool it over about 3 weeks and the crystal grows up the spiral and then forms the blade.
The main problem with the Rotary Vane and the Wankel engines? Lubrication. The reciprocating engine has survived because it is easier to keep the "bang" away from the oil.
After thinking about this for a while, the biggest issue is going to be lubricating the vanes. Some people have already mentioned that one of the major issues here is getting debris and fluids in the vane channels. However, since the 'crank shaft' (if we want to call it that) does not spin in the compressor wheel, you have a lot of freedom to use it to supply oil as well as a provide weep holes. The key here is that you will need pretty high oil pressure to stabilize the vane in it's channel and to keep combustion from trying to escape through the weep hole. You basically have to make a hydrostatic bearing that also acts as a seal. Immensely tricky, but not impossible.
@@TheIcyhydra technically that could be combated by manufacturers useing the fact that the engines could be a lot smaller and use the free space to designing the engine bay and engine so that it is easy to repair and service.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Maybe mix the oil in with the fuel, like in a 2 stroke? But then there goes your emissions. I don't know enough about wenkel engines, how did they solve this issue?
You don't need a sliding vane though. it can be hinged with centrifugal forces keeping it in contact with outer wall., you could even go really interesting and make it a curved crescent moon so when its fully extended it closes off the channel, and it hooks ridges in the outer case that slide it back into its housing.
Nice video, good explanations. I bit of load can be added by turning on the ac on defog and also electric defrost, while you're at it. Then again, you can install a diesel parking heater. I did this on my L200/triton and on my old beater dacia Logan. That way you raise the temp close both of the engone and quickly defrost the cabin.
I see three problems: 1.) Seal reliability. You have to seal around the rotor as well as the vanes. This is a huge perimeter compaered to that of a cylinder/piston seal. 2.) Friction. Keeping a tight seal along this long perimeter is likely to cause more friction. And all of of this is going the be difficult to successfully lubricate, especially where the vane slide in and out. 3.) Heat build up. There is going to have to be a way to cool the rotor and the vanes.
This is just showing how a simplified ver. Works. ideally you want both halves to be combustion so you need a parallel compressor similar in design attached to the same rotor then you want to have the vanes to be oil pressured and have a rotation to them to modify further the chamber pressure. Having all cycles in one chamber is over complicating it keeping them separate will be easier to deal with. It works for fluids because it is uniform and it doesn't for combustion because there are 3 cycles in combustion when you break them down permchamber it will work again.
On the topic of that meme, I once read a "russian" version of the rocket story where everything was "It doesn't know and if it does it will be denied that it didn't when in fact, it didn't anyway".
Fantastic video! Thank you for explaining rotational vane engines so clearly. It really got me thinking about miniaturizing and mounting them like electric motors to minimize gyroscopic effects in vehicles. I'm excited about the potential improvements in handling, stability, and engine efficiency this could bring. Keep up the awesome work - looking forward to your next insights!
3:40 check out "The how and why of mechanical movements" from 1967, page 206: 1964 Renault supplied a rotary vane motor with valves to American motors. 1967 P.R. Mallory made a rotary vane engine. patented by Wallace Linn and Gianni Dotto. Other weird engine designs you haven't covered yet are mentioned there.
Congratulations! You just reinvented the wheel, er, water pump. Bazillion guys have tried to develop this since Ramelli invented it in the mid 16th century. That would include some major players including guys from GM, Deere, MTU, RPI, and "other" entities. I was on one of those teams. In short, it doesn't work, for numerous reasons mostly centered on the sealing mechanism, or lack thereof. Brick walls - vane deflection, supersonic tip speed, cooling, lubrication. Usable power requires either high compression or displacement, both of which vane devices do exceptionally badly. However, if you build a "vane engine" the size of a Ferris wheel and turn it at Ferris wheel speeds, it'll work but will still produce a fraction of the power and efficiency of an equivalent sized two stroke or turbine, both of which are multifuel. BTB - there are many SAE papers on this topic going back 40+ years for anyone who has a few thousand hours to kill. Oh, and, Felix Wankel likely didn't invent the engine which bears his name, he likely "borrowed" the concept from one of his assistants.
Despite your voiced disgust for "range extender" engines, that seems like the perfect use case for a rotary vane engine. Working essentially as a generator, it can be designed to run at a constant RPM. This eliminates the issue of the centrifugal force on the vanes, because that can be taken into consideration when designing the springs. It may have a bit of leakage while it's getting up to speed, but that would be a minimal time if the load isn't coupled immediately.
The range extender (hybrid) car is the perfect balance right now, given that a lot of electricity generation is still coal powered, and the battery range is limited. A hybrid only requires a small battery.
@@toby9999the fun part is that even if coal is burned making the electricity, the electric car still has a lower overall CO2 output over its life because of the efficiency of power plants vs the efficiency of using explosions to make circles
@@toby9999 Agreed. I work on accelerating green energy and decelerating black energy ASAP. Reaching too low and too fast to eliminate emissions will increase prices, reduce usability, and slow emission reduction. This is simple math: As Y approaches zero, X approaches infinity. How close to the asymptote is optimal? Range-extended hybrids are likely to lower total emissions faster than all-electric ones. Range-extended-car adoption rates will be significantly faster than for all-electric cars and not much worse than all-electric cars for aggregate MPGes. They lower prices, increase usability, and extend the car’s lifespan with minor increases in operational costs. Range-extended hybrids have smaller, lighter, and less expensive batteries. They cost less to manufacture. The batteries can be used longer. (Battery range can degrade further before replacing the batteries. This could double miles between battery replacements.) ICE motors for electric cars are simple to engineer and maintain, particularly compared to hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and standard ICEs. They allow for greater freedom in car-body design and shapes because the batteries use less space and volume. For example, smaller cars could have similar cargo space. The percentage differences in MPGe and fuel costs between all-electric and range-extended are not large and they are insignificant compared to the aggregate miles driven for all ICEs on the road. Remember, the goal is lowering total CO2e emissions ASAP, not lowering individual emissions. They solve some of the biggest issues with all-electric cars: high-hassle, longer-duration, long-distance travel. They eliminate worrying about running out of juice and reduce the complexity of planning routes and stops. They will be used more often for trips because they will get you there faster. They ease issues with urban charging where people don’t have fixed parking spaces, or they live in condo or apartment-complexes. (This is a significant barrier to rapid green adoption.) And they improve maneuverability. The lower masses with similar torques improve cornering while somewhat increasing acceleration. For most people, range-extended hybrids "Just Work" as well or better than ICEs and hybrids. All electrics, not so much. "Better beast best."
@@Ryan-fb1ot It's the opposite of economical, the engine is completely un-economical, which is why It never took off beyond a few sports cars that Mazda threw them in.
The reciprocation of the vanes even though are self-balanced, are not involved in the actual 'transference' of force. The force generated is always 90 degrees to the lever arm and doesn't change phase as seen in pistons or even Wankel.
@@shahabsandhu4034 Yes the forces are tangential to the piston but the movement of those vanes are literally pistons. I'm also not sure how those will overcome enviromental challenges, how are they supposed to seal against the rotating chamber?
6:40 This thing looks ridiculous. You want an apex seal that extends via a spring? I’m sorry, we already have valve float issues on piston engines. We gonna have to worry about seal float now?
@@beefsupreme67 The only way to do that would be to use Linear actuators. The fastest linear actuators move 9in/sec, about half a mile an hour, without load. Best comparison would be valves in your typical piston engine. For the average valve to avoid being hit by their respective piston, they have to close as fast as the piston moves, at the least. The average speed of a piston in a 2022 2.0 liter Honda civic, at 5k rpm, is 32mph. At a redline of 6.8k rpm, the average speed of the piston is 43.5mph. A computer running the fastest linear actuator wouldn’t be fast enough to close these apex seals. You could use pneumatic springs, but you’d have sealing issues with the rotor since it spins, and you can’t differentiate between which seals are open and closing, they will all be trying to push outward with great force. You’d be seeing a lot of power loss at low speed, just like you do with pneumatic springs in F1 cars. The engine would be a high revving one, simply because it would stall at low speed from the force required to recess the apex seals. And that’s before you consider that the force on the apex seal isn’t just up and down(the axis the seal opens/closes on). Extending the seal out like that turns it into a small lever of sorts. That lever drags along the walls of the housing, creating friction. That creates a secondary force trying to pull each seal sideways instead of pushing it straight down. If the force on that little lever exceeds a certain load, then it snaps wherever the fulcrum is. That fulcrum is going to be where the seal meets the outside lip of its socket. It will break off at the socket lip, and now you have no apex seal at all, and a piece of debris rattling around inside the housing for the rotor. There’s a reason most apex seals are short, just barely peaking out of the place they slot into. People keep trying to get the rotary engine to work. I get it, it’s more efficient to have the energy already be rotational, than it is to convert the linear motion of a piston into rotational energy. But we already have the peak example of a pistonless engine… it’s called a turbine.
18:05 I'm no engineer, hell I've got 2 brain cells left fighting for 3rrd place. But i see a couple challenges: First is exhaust, I can see potential power losses from the combustion phase pushing out the exhaust. Second would be ensuring the compressed air doesn't overpower fuel flow into the chamber and timing the spark for combustion. Like I said, I'm no engineer but at higher revolutions wouldn't we see a decline in efficiency at higher RPM if we're also pushing the exhaust out? Furthermore, I suspect there's some serious material science behind getting the seals right on the vanes, that's a lot of potential friction, little room for error, and if you're talking such tolerances for gapped seals how does it compensate for material elasticity?
I dont think there is much energy lost "pushing" the exhaust because it is not compressing it. Sure there is some loss removing the exhaust and also compressing the air but compared to other types of engine it is minimal. As for the seal of the vain it would be a perfect solution to not have any friction, no touching parts but still good enough seal to not mix different stages. Thats what he is also talking about and i would think is the main downside to the engine
What do you think happens in a regular piston engine? Im no engineer but any loss there applies to any engine. And the other claim is probably not a big issue. Everything like that is an engineering challenge which can be solved with time.
The other way to deal with that is a constant boost stream. Ie: a super charger would have a constant pressure especially with a thin gas non-touching housing rotor setup. That would also help with some control as it would create parasitic losses at lower RPM’s and allow for a secondary braking effect once going. Then could be a max RPM limiting factor as well (by allowing for only X flow). So the gains aren’t really from the device but more harnessed. You’re better at burning this and having less losses. Exhaust is always a loss unless you’re turbo’ed then you gain some or more back. But still having to add more fuel which becomes more and more “self defeating”. But the exhaust isn’t the problem at all. That’s like a non issue compared to a full rework design that’s scalable. It’s a great starting point for sure! 🤷♂️
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that this is the kind of engine that Wankle envisioned when he first had the idea of making a rotary engine, but the main problem lies in the vane, this is why rotary engines have a shape like a dorito with a strange engine room shape, Wankle wants to eliminate the vane but still ensure that the rotor is always attached to the engine wall so that it is easy to seal. (And we all know wankle still failed to do a perfect seal) Additions: If what you say about seals is applicable to this engine then shouldn't it also be applicable to the Wankle?
My thoughts exactly ... You wouldn't want large vanes flopping around. Also the animation is a bit misleading with the vanes almost falling out of the center. They would need to sit much deeper to eliminated to decrease the effect of tolerances.
@@pugnate666 Not only that, but the central shaft has to be very heavy. The vanes would also bind in their slots, if not initially, once the engine began to heat up. This is a problem that current applications of rotary vane pumps do not have to deal with. And as others have said, the range of motion of a piezo-electric actuator is an order of magnitude less than what would be necessary here.
agree. if you're thinking about maintaining a vane seal as it flies across a varying surface, imo that's how you end up with a wankel geometry. my intuition is that's as solved as this problem ever gets
My farther and I discussed the vane rotary engine in the 1960's and we also discussed the friction and wear problems thus putting the idea aside until technology could catch up, maybe it has and now is the time. It would be nice for an old timer engineer to see this before I go.
Well at this point I would say you're going to have to get around a lot of the patents that Mazda would hold via the Wankel rotary engine I know that it's a different engine but one component of that engine you may not be able to avoid using and or using some components and that component itself would be the emissions system you may end up in a license problem with Mazda I believe that's probably why it was shelved back in the '90s and no one's really messed with its sense at least to any great scale of a car company. There's probably a way to adapt the pollution control system from Mazda's rotary engines but they're again you're going to need a license to do that or you end up in a lawsuit The problem is yes the cost of the license but you're also going to have to have a really good legal team to help you get that license on favorable terms and that's not cheap so the license itself could cost you I don't know 50 million but the legal team could easily cost you 80 million dollars now that's an extreme example but I wouldn't doubt if that's what they ran into back in the '90s and of course development costs in general as well as licensing fees would have more than quadrupled by now so even if back in the '90s you could have all of this said and done for $10 million bucks now it's going to cost you $40 million bucks. You may not necessarily need a license per se from Mazda but I will say that if I were a car company attempting to fuck with this engine I would go ahead and try to acquire that license just in case we happen to even inadvertently make a little something that could throw us into a patent infringement problem with Mazda You're going to need a legal department and that's going to cost you before you even do the first bit of research and development.
@15:30 The problem of friction at higher speeds due to centrifugal forces acting on the blades could be overcome by electromagnets at the bottom of the blades that would compensate these forces proportional to the rotational speed. The blades could be made out of ceramic, their base out of magnetic materials.
As a physicist a small note. To say there are zero vibrations when substances are set on fire is impossible. But yes, the design idea would have probably quite reduced vibrations, depending on how the problems are tackled listed by the engineers. All in all an interesting video, thanks.
The Vanes do not reciprocate, it is an illusion. It's more like the rotor is engulfing the vane. What's actually happening is the rotor and housing are converging, since the housing is larger than the rotor, and the rotor is offset. The vanes move thru space in a circular motion, as can be seen if you pay attention to the vane tips. It just appears like the vanes are 'retracting' into the rotor'. In the animation above yes the vanes don't follow a perfectly circular pathway, due to the 'ellipse' of the housing, so they are moving in an ellipse pathway. But in an actual vane engine, the housing is circular, which the vanes obviously follow.
I have nearly 40 years experience in hydraulics. Vane pumps have been tried in industrial hydraulics but cannot compete durably at the pressures that piston pumps operate at. And there you have fantastic lubrication at all times. I cannot see vanes lasting under the conditions during combustion typically found in an internal combustion engine. Nice theory but converting ir to practice is something else.
If this tech had been given substantial research dollars perhaps that could have been solved 20-30 years ago but at this point money is going to electric. New gas motors (even iterative changes) are not really getting investment since their are no longer much gains to be had without major redesigns like this it just isn't happening; big auto companies are not investing in moonshot projects. By comparison electric continues to advance and technologies in labs and prototypes now will make 1000 mile ranges possible; at that point and given all the other advantages why burn stuff for personal ground transportation. Combine that with the inevitability that viable FSD will eventually exist (probably in 10-20 years) and its a whole new ball game for getting around - ownership of personal vehicles will become a luxury.
@@ccibinel - this tech has received considerable research money - I know of 4 different research activities into trying to make this work. It would have been good if this presenter had conducted some basic research and shown all the examples of this idea that have been built and tested over the years. Showing the multiple failed attempts to make this work and determining the common factors that made all the previous attempts to make this work would have been considerably more informative and would have resulted in a far more balanced representation of the value of this idea.
I'm only a minute and 44 seconds into this video and I have already seen 3 examples of D4A's legendary ability to explain complex engine concepts and features for any layman to understand. Bravo. I've subed to this channel nearly 5 years ago and the consistency and increasing quality of your videos always astounds me. I truly hope this channel never dies.
I was going to go to school for mechanical engineering, but after watching his video I have all the relevant parts without the $200,000 debt and four years of time wasted.
@@ASDasdSDsadASD-nc7lf Then you really have absolutely no idea what tertiary education is. I suggest you go to the mechanical engineering school and study ... and discover that what you have seen in this video is absolute garbage.
About 2 decades ago as a mechanical design draftsman with equivalent of 2nd year mech eng and also obsessed with the idea of a better ICE with lower weight, smoother operation and torque, I came up with several iterations (unfortunately only in digital form, no contacts, money or time to do what I wanted to do which was get a prototype built). The 😮mdifference between mine and the design shown in this video is that the
As a hydraulic pump/motor this works well. The drive/driven fluid provides lubrication. As a gas pump/motor this still requires lubrication to be added to the gas. Much like the wankel rotary engine, I don't see this meeting pollution standards.
If something like this rose to prominence wayyy back at the birth of the ICE vehicle, then we'd just be selling gas that's already pre-mixed with lubricant.
"looks" being the keyword here. Look at the Liquid Piston HEHC rotary, there's a reason they're in an exclusive military contract and not selling any to the public, since the military saw the potential, realized lightness and power density was key, and now all the military drones you might get a glimpse of that fly high and slow on propeller power are running one of their engines, and troops on the ground that need electrical power have a smaller generator that they can actually carry now which makes enough juice to do some work.
Range extenders may not be sexy, but, since the 1940s, Diesel-electric locomotives have used internal combustion engines that generate electricity to power electric drivetrains.
We use these type of motors as waste pumps on our fleet of septic trucks.they work great until the vanes jam up and we have to tear apart the pump and replace them. Ours are also centrifugal and the central hub is offset in the housing so that at the top the vanes are pushed in and drop down at the bottom.
Apparently, in the mitochondria in our cells, the last step to ATP generation, ATP Synthase, works like a microscopic rotary engine, turning ADP and a free phosphate into ATP, powered by the electron transport chain.
Powered by a proton pump. The protons (H+) are from the internal compartment of the mitochondria, pumped out into the intermembrane space by H+ pumps powered by electrons running through the electron transport chain. By what is essentially a combined proton motive force and a membrane electrical force, the protons return to the internal compartment through the only available route, ATP synthase, which as you mention adds a phosphate to ADP making ATP. by a rotating complex, similar to an electric motor with a rotor and stator.
Great desine , hope to see more about it , i have used the hivac pumps in the cleaning industry , it can suck and blow gasses , even watercooled and lubricated systems
Piezoelectric actuators don't move centimeters. They don't move even millimiters. The move like 200 micrometers... Which means 0.0002mm You just CAN'T control those veins with those. R&R uses them, true, but the turbin blades are not supposed to move like the veins at all, they use them to just compensate the microscopic play or the termal elongation... This has the very same problems of the Wankel: it's a dry run and it destroyes apex seals...
This. Why compare the simplicity of following a circle (close to constant radius) like in a jet engine with following an ellipse or something even more complex (radius changing several cm)?
Put the vanes on a path that does the majority of movement and use the piezoelectric actuators to offset from that path to handle heat expansion, manufacturing tolerances, etc
@@kllrnohj How exactly does one "Put the vanes on a path that does the majority of movement"? Are you suggesting two actuator mechanisms? Then the first must have an end-stroke accuracy of 0.2mm. Springs not work. Linear motors/actuators?
From a thermodynamic perspective, theres a TON of surface area there that would conduct heat away from combustion and leave a ton of unburnt fuel along the rotor and rotor walls. This is why DI in piston engines makes so much more efficiency. You keep the fuel in a column in the center of the cylinder where things are the hottest, and keep fuel away from the cylinder walls. You cant help as much the head and piston but it is what it is. Now that all the fuel is in the center of the cylinder, you can keep its temp much higher than the flash point so more of the fuel in the cylinder burns. Rotaries have too much surface area and the fuel stops burning because the heat gets conducted away too quickly. This is why they are dirty and fuel inefficient. What you need is a dedicated burn chamber where you can accurately control the fuel and air flow, and hopefully keep everything above the flashpoint of the fuel. This means more complication of a pds supercharger to bring air into the engine. I've already worked out a lot of the missing details but have taken no action to making a test unit because i just dont have the tooling or drive atm. I have a pretty sneaky automated start up sequence for said engine as well. Wish i could share it without someone trying to steal it. Lol
You can't own a concept, bro. Even patents are temporary. It's not stealing when they can probably do it better than you, especially since you're struggling with 'drive'
That is why you have external combustion chamber, which is all of the patents do it. trying to achieve efficient combustion within a vane chamber isn't realistic.... this is just a cartoon like animation lol. Meant to illustrate how rotary vane is the best possible architecture for converting combustion into rotary shaft power. It solves all four fundamental problems of the piston/crank. And heat transfer is a function of time.... the vanes are moving far faster than pistons, and are NOT reversing direction. Far less heat loss to cylinder heads, cylinder walls... PLUS the combustion is expanded to NEAR-Ambient, with expansion ratios over 25:1, which means exhaust temps under 300f exiting the engine housing, compared to 1200f of piston engine, nuts.
no... that's not how thermodynamics work, fundamentally you need to understand that "combustion" is not inherently heat, its rapid expansion that then later gets turned into heat, the walls of the chamber wouldn't conduct anything away unless they were meant to work as heat conductors because there wouldn't be enough time in the chamber for the combustion to turn into heat and then dissipate into the walls of the chamber, in the vein concept the combustion is able to directly give itself more space until it gets forced out the exhaust, you know what that means? little to no heat deduction... the fact that the combustion chamber is directly increasing in size along the combustion path makes an optimal condition for efficiency and power that's one of the reasons we use them as pumps the liquid that is being forced into the pump can directly force itself out.
@@c1fi364 You've got that totally backward. Combustion is the 'instant' production of heat, which then leads to expansion. Scientists literally call fuel injection 'heat addition' when describing thermodynamic cycles. It is ENTIRELY about the heat. Pressure is a direct result of ONLY the heat created. Which is also why all combustion engines are technically called 'Heat Engines'. Once you understand what exactly 'Heat' is... kinetic energy of molecules and their violent collisions... and how that energy is created during combustion (oxidation of carbon and hydrogen), you'll get it.
this engine does have a flaw, which is durability. the metal attached the the springs would be under HEAVY stress at all times and will become dialoged/break if left unchecked. What I think would be a better replacement would be using two circles and putting two rods in. The engine would be at the bottom whist whilst the the combustion happens at the top of the compartment. why not add compressed air and fuel directly? have the engine power a compressor which in turn force feeds itself. you may ask "but how would you get it to start?" its simple, its a circle, slap a "electric engine" on the main rod (just to start the rotation). heck, you could even make it a hybrid all within one engine compartment.
Thanks for your video. I love your enthusiasm and clear explanation of traditional internal combustion designs and major issues. The comments say it all. I taught engineering for many years and came to the conclusion a long time ago that the electric motor just had so many advantages, the world would be better spending it's time, money and energy on cracking battery tech. .... And in the mean time maybe the 'range extender' is not a bad compromise.
@@wesleydeer889 Hey genius, try reading up on something if you’re gonna mention it. Gaseous cavitation can only happen when a _fluid is present,_ and the gas is forced to dissolve into it. Completely different phenomenon, with completely different effects.
I once had a con rod see the rest of the combustion chamber when I tried to shift from 2nd to 3rd but instead shifted from 2nd to 1st. A Mazda B6 is not designed to see north of 12,000 rpm.
my grandfather made this design back in the 60's. He used a glo plug to try and start the combustion and had a tube on the outside for increased combustion {i think} neat how families can have so many near misses
First thought @4:04: Those "vanes" would make a seal difficult! They'd either have to wear at the tip or have oil feed to the tip (and sides for a good seal). Think starter motor brushes. Secondly, you couldn't completely stop the vanes from wobbling on the combustion as there would be a huge pressure bias. I think this could limit power. You could have a roller on the tip of the vane, but you'd still need to seal the inner side of the roller and the sides, too, and you're just adding complexity and lowering the life-span. I don't see this doing well because of these vanes.
About 1972 when I was 12, I drew up a plan for a vane motor like this one. After contemplating it for a while, I concluded that the vanes would be very difficult to seal properly, would have excessive wear on the power stroke and would probably float at higher RPMs due to inadequate springs. I still see the same problems.
you could connect the vanes to an external raceway with bearings, converting sliding friction to rolling OR rotate the elliptic housing around a fixed rotor thus removing centrifugal force from the vanes
These ideas have at least a bit of promise, but of course would add some parts. Diminishing centrifugal force by rotating the housing changes the picture considerably, but introduces complexity handling intake and exhaust. One can imagine diminishing the effects of the mechanical stresses on the vanes and the housing by adjusting the thickness of the vanes and their tip shape, as well as their metallurgy. Chamber shape might also be adjusted, and (sigh) a cooling system could be applied if necessary, though cooling is, essentially, removing potentially useful energy from the system. Hm, does a vane engine need to be an internal combustion engine? Or could it be better suited (in some form) to use as a steam engine? We know that for decades at least, stationary power plant engines have exceeded the efficiency of internal combustion engines by a significant factor, due partly, of course, to the difference in size, and the constant speed of operation. Also, we aren't by any means done with turbines, both internal- and external-combustion. And consider what various engines may run on hydrogen as a clean fuel. Lot of engineering jobs coming up . . .
At 5:24, you said zero reciprocating parts--don't the seals reciprocate? Remind me, what were the problems with side-loading seals again? I don't understand how you can look at a Wankel, understand that thin-walled structures loaded in shear are a problem, and then add reciprocation on top of it and call it better. Face it, until you get to turbines, crankshaft-driven engines are what peak combustion technology looks like.
What if I stalk myself and post novel length comments here?? 😂😂
You still own a rotary engined vehicle. My population statistics are foolproof.
Fair point haha the venn diagram doesn’t lie
Hi
so fast... morning guys
Do it.
I agree.. but I have to mention, I am one of those people you mentioned who has spent almost 22 years designing a vane powerplant.. There is well over 70 iterations on my design table and shelves. Most of them run, but the one problem that I run into and many others must cross, is the pressure relief on the back sides of each vane. If it is only air behind the vanes, that is okay, and helps keep the vanes outwards in addition to the rotational forces that naturally fling the vanes outwards. But, once you start to collect any liquids, behind the vanes, that is where me and so many others run into crashes, or failure of the machine. We have tried to vent this trapping system to both the intake side to suck any liquids out of on the exhaust side to be pushed out from the linear motion of the vanes telescopic travel in a pumping action... Even tried to just vent these trapping areas to external areas, for collection just to try to get past the issue... I have tried through holes vents long wise in the vanes themselves to allow the trapped liquids to relieve into the front side of the vanes for additional lubrication on the walls, and likewise on the aft side of the vanes in efforts to lubricate the next following vane.... In either of those, we get hovering of the vanes at higher rpms as the edge is trying to either collect/scrape/scoop up the previously laid oil/fuel and grit and results in HP and rpm loss, and after extended periods of endurance runs, hammering effect of the walls, does what we call "catipillar walling" of harmonic wearing in a sign wave and that creates a nasty problem that compounds on itself to destruction very quickly....
These units are so much fun, but I am personally burnt out.. the math mathematics that goes into the volume of the wedges to intake/exhaust to the dimensions of the vanes length, width, height and or length to thickness issue. Based on over 200 material iterations in some base models, and discover some work great some not, but it just keeps the battle of wear factor to life expectancy of the vanes and housing wall(s).. the saving grace is the ease of machining, as compared to the exceptionally tight tolerance of the Wankle housing to rotor dimensions to aid in prevention wedging or crashing.. these vane motors are pretty forgiving in manufacturing... Allot of work, (as you stated) is still needed by somebody who has more money then me.. I am just a guy in a machine shop playing part time on these, in fact, I haven't touched them in about a year or so...
I am not saying anything you said is wrong, but more over, agreeing with you, there is allot of potential for these designs, but somebody who has more money then me can play with more specialized materials / alloys, and simulation software better then mine to hone every bit of active and passive friction out of the entire rotational cycle while incorporating balance as a whole..
Oh, and another crazy issue, leeching, from a combusted chamber, leeching under the wiping edge to the yet not combusted air/fuel ... With a mass damper damage happens in the idea to just carry the rotation on over past the preignition leeched chamber with bent vanes, or snapped axle shaft or ruptured wall.. that is always a fun day and loud too... With out a flywheel aid to dampen things out harmonically, the motors rattle themselves into shavings and scrape themselves to death.
Smaller power tools vane pumps are stable, but the moment they step up to combustion, a whole other character of issues happens... Which is what the one photo of the multi-vane rotor was trying to deal with I think it was a (20 vane rotor) also trying even number of vanes and odd number of vanes all trying to calm down the harmonics or vibrations that rattle these into destruction... I wish more people could put more effort and money into this, venture..
The biggest unit I have that is still working is 5 inches, and offer (0.2 HP) @15,000 rpm .and is on a bicycle and geared super low and allot of backfiring from unspent fuel but does work just not very good but is on the threshold of not ripping itself apart.. Maybe this winter, I can get back on these
Thanks for posting this. I love this guy's videos, but he gets a bit to enthusiastic sometimes and ignores the problems.
so that's why it isn't in a Honda yet
Thank you for sharing this. What occurred to me was, why not make these engines fixed RPM and have the vanes mechanically move along a internal slot or track that matches the "cylinder wall" thus maintaining a perfect distance at all times.
Reposting this here:
This may be a stupid question, but... why can't it just be a screw?
Why does all of the action have to occur on one plane? With a screw design, each event happens in its own sperate plane so then you don't have the problem with these vanes moving in weird ways. I'm probably missing something (I'm not an engineer, but I work with them!) but I just wanted to ask that question.
@@Ranchpig67
And once you have constant rpm output, you have a engine that is pretty much ideal for hybrids in terms of efficiency.
I think that the REAL solution is not to eliminate reciprocation, but eliminate rotation. Instead of wheels, we should have large legs that hammer the car down the road.
EUREKA!!!!!
A giant pogo stick!
I've actually made that in banjo & kazooie nuts and bolts! :)
It acts like hydraulics as well
There was a patent made for a bouncing tank back in ww2...
m.ruclips.net/video/lZ5VMglwGNQ/видео.html
The only difference between that solution and a horse is the . . . name.
Your video caught my attention as I designed this exact engine 40 years ago while in high school. I grew up on a farm and we fixed everything and I knew every part in every engine we had. I liked the idea of the rotary engines and first is how to lub it. I tossed that aside and though do it like a two stroke. Ok that will work now how long will it last. After seeing OIL pumps fail that just pumps oil I began to have doubts that it would last any time. Now the emissions have be be cleaned up. Best is cylinder and odd shaped combustion chambers do not burn well in the wedges and they are just there. I lost interest in it and have lost my original drawings somewhere in the many places I have been. Thanks for the video.
as an engineer, i see problems with it:
1. wane reliability
2. lubrication
3. crosschamber isolation
You probably mean „vane“ reliability
No, wayne reliability
It would surely have the same longevity issue as the wankel with the seals on the ends of the vanes
as a regular joe i also see a problem with vane reliability. carbon will get them stuck as heck and the forces pressing on them will bend the fk out of them. as for lubrication, same as 2 stroke. crosschamber isolation? same as 2 stroke. doesn't have to be perfect to run. it just has to be good enough.
Pretty well the Exact same problems in ANY engine . Piston Rings and Periphery Seals live in that same , Low lubrication , High Scuff environment that the Vanes would be dealing with , so SIMILAR SOLUTIONS . Micro porosity in the Chamber wall to retain an Oil film and Correct choice of Materials for the Chamber surface and Vanes . The centrifugal forces in the Rotor would provide sufficient Oil pressure to deal with peripheral oiling without the need for an Oil Pump . Rotor just needs Roller Bearings and LP oil supply .
Just simply provide small gallery ways through the Rotor assembly that lead to the Vanes . Only need to be quite tiny
And a tiny amount of Chamber Bleed would not really matter considering the Cycles adjacent to each .
Another Engineer speaking here .
"What if we push fluid into a pump, and make it explode too"-type-engine
I love it
Every engine is basically an inverted pump.
the clarity of that statement almost makes it sound insulting with its simplicity
for clarity, that was a compliment
It's like this for all motors, what creates energy can also use it and vice versa. Well it's not exactly like this essentially these machines are all energy converters. I like a lot the analogy because it also works with electric motors, and of course this is idea behind hybrid cars and regenerative breaking.
requires oxygen to explode. iCE are air pumps with addition of explosion. Rocket engines have fuel that supplies the O2 or its injected for thrust. Jet engines add fuel to compressed O2
My prediction of an ironic future timeline (which actually exist in some parallel universe, of course): Tesla having fallen on hard times as the EV market has gone bust, comes out with a hybrid using a perfected rotary vane engine and goes on to become the Toyota of global auto industry
For a few minutes I was thinking this was a beautifully simple concept. Then the issues of lubrication and stresses on the vanes brought me back to earth. Nice mental exercise.
Yeah, I build a LOT of machines with air vane motors. They are maintenance hogs and have low efficiency.
"A rocket motor is the simplest engine" - looks at a Saturn V F1 engine and begins to weep. ....."In theory" 😜
@@brayhill Yeah, high friction on the sides of vanes, and typically sacrificial vane surface. There might be a way to deal with it, but I can’t visualize it. 4 strokes us a sacrificial ring in a cast iron or sleeved block and last upwards of 100k miles, but don’t have much side force on the ring.
I instantly thought of the stress on vanes when I saw the diagram
lets just stick to pistons eh
@@drovid008 Well to be fair, if Vane engines came first we'd look at pistons like they were garbage because the research into them would have been low.
I feel like the issue of counteracting centripetal forces wouldn't be too difficult to counteract or account for. For me lubrication seems like the confusing part.
Well, this is the first mention of this type engine I have seen. I am all for this mechanical technology.
Bull s...t. rotary engine is uncomfortable, unreliable, way too noisy...
I can go on and on.
Mazda was a hair tread away from declaring bankruptcy after they began to sell their rx5 if I remember correctly.
They still replace most of the rotary engines
Rx7 owner: the apex seals were a major problem in a wankel.
Vane engine: "hold my beer"
They were, but my 1981 RX7 ran 250K miles of my abuse before I finally sold it and it was still running well, though not quite as strongly as when new. That little 12A was a lot stronger than the car it was installed in!
@@Mikexxx53112A?
Wearing vanes that have to slide in and out of the rotor would be the WORST mechanic idea ever, the wear factor would be insane ,
Oh wow, what an original comment
Incorrect. I had three wankel engines in three different cars, sold each of them running perfectly with 150k miles at the point of sale. That apex seal problem was solved in 1983 and never caused another problem again in the dozen years these engines were sold in cars.
17:07 When you said "Roy Hartfield", that caught me off-guard for a second - because I'm currently a student at Auburn University, and I thought "wait, THAT Dr. Hartfield??" Sure enough, it's the same guy, and I walk past his office every day! He's one of the aerospace engineering professors in Davis Hall. If you want to ask him some questions, perhaps you could reply with them here and I can stop by his office to pass them on in-person to get his response!
This sounds like an incredible follow up video in the making. Hope people bump your comment and this gets taken seriously. I think this is a phenomenal idea!
What a nice idea;
The Wankel engine has one crown the sliding vane hasn't taken yet: It worked to the point it reached production level to be used on real life, day to day applications.
It's almost like we use things that work
Yeah, this design has been well established in liquid pumps forever. If it was some kind of illuminati silver bullet, someone would have put it in *something* commercial as a combustion engine before now.
@@jeffh8803 Like the US Navy did, when they acquired the only Rotary Vane engine made by an actual company back in 2005... General Vortex Energy.... Patent "sliding blade heat engine"... Navy gave them a total of 3 grants, over 5 years, totalling over $5 million.... a 25KW (40HP) and a 125KW (160HP) engine was developed, and tested at SWRI, achieving 61% BTE. The real question is what would happen if some carmaker released cars with engines even close to 60% BTE. Since that is 3 times the efficiency of piston engines... global economy crash... the demand of oil/prices is everything. Rotary vane engines won't be available until world-wide economics can handle the efficiency.
Vanes are more common as discussed.
The Wankel Rotary Engine cars really suck to own. I worked on one once to replace a rotor with a used one & new seals years ago. Just so the customer could sell the car...
About 2 decades ago as a mechanical design draftsman with equivalent of 2nd year mech eng and also obsessed with the idea of a better ICE with lower weight, smoother operation and torque, I came up with several iterations (unfortunately only in digital form, no contacts, money or time to do what I wanted to do which was get a prototype built). There were some differences between mine and the design shown in this video. One being that the rotor isn’t circular but elliptical and the vanes in mine were located not in the spinning rotor but in the casing which solves quite a few problems and allows for a sturdier, precision cam-operated vane with lighter sliding seals against the rotor. Also, the exhaust gases vent through ports that open in the side of the housing, ensuring almost complete venting of exhaust gases.
One problem with this type of engine is that combustion always occurs in the same location, and the housing will get extremely hot there, but modern materials and cooling systems should cope.
I’d also love to see this type of engine happen. I honestly think that this is one of the many things that humanity has failed to exploit to our advantage.
The Vane engine, now with 33% more apex seals flying out of your exhaust
Could be 100x more, the 4 vanes is just arbitrary if you don't need to actually build it. You could have more combustion and compression chambers too. As long as you don't need to build it.
Anyway this is used in some automotive vacuum pumps, but without a spring(rides on the wall back and forth).
But who cares it you can't make it work in practice.;
How should the vains Not Break of Wehen you Pütz the power of combustion on them?
@@lassikinnunen What does 100X more vanes mean if you are not making the engine? And who says no one is making the engine? Or will ever make the engine? He covered all these things in the video, sir.
So the problems of making jet turbine engines - which are rotary engines with (many) protruding vanes - are all simpler to solve than this rotary vane engine ? Hmmm….
Every day thousands of people are transported reliably in vehicles using engines vastly more complex than this rotary vane engine as intended for automotive vehicles.
But, of course, the engineering is much tougher to solve for the latter.
@@TheSulross Do the turbines move in and out and have force against the outside walls? How much maintenance do jet turbines require compared to wankel and regular 4 stroke engines?
I checked with my step-son who is highly regarded in the field of engine design. He agreed with the multiple potential benefits. He also agreed with you flagging the seals as the unsolved problem.
He said no-contact gas seals using ceramic piezo-electric actuators in jet engines seal a constant-size gap. That is trivial compared to sealing the variable-diameter vanes. It would be difficult to extend the vanes outward to a consistent length at a um tolerances. In addition, they would have to do this while being exposed to both the full heat of combustion and the full speed of the rotor.
I learned a lot from this episode. Keep'm com'n.
I wonder what your stepson would think of replacing the vanes with a wedge shaped piece that pivots.
@mikeybdy1 This is my immediate thought as well. Has anyone tried it yet?
@@mikeybdy1 If it's a wedge, I don't think you could get a true seal at full retraction, which appears to be required to get this to work. Would need to see a model of it running to be sure of that.
Why not a high pressure air supply (flowing to the tips of the vanes) with a labyrinth seal
@@KindredBrujah what if instead of using a spring to push against the walls, the vanes are mechanically linked with the position of the shaft? like some way to have the distance of the vane away from the center of the shaft linked with its rotational position, whether by gears, bearings rolling around shaped pieces of metal, etc.
There are three things to look for in any new miracle engine technology:
1- How is it cooled.
2- How is it sealed.
3- How is it lubricated.
Cooling this thing would be similar to a Wankle so not that big an issue.
Sealing this thing would likely be exponentially more difficult than with a Wankle which already has issues with apex seals. In addition to the issues faced by Wankels the amount of travel of the vanes at any significant RPM would likely get into the same issues as seen with early valve springs.
Lubrication would require some oil burning (bad for emmisions) and lubrication of the sliding vanes under high temperature and pressure.
You are right about that. If only there were a new type of turbine engine that addresses all that and much much more recently disclosed in a MOTORTREND article!
Couldn't you use a cam on the central shaft to move the vanes in and out, rather than a spring?
heat is a problem if you want 4 times the power. even when its more efficient, the heat will be much higher.
@@alkaholic4848 was thinking that too.... still needs seals (like apex seals) if you went that route, though
@@alkaholic4848 yes actually that has been done in a successful vane engine, very surprising you were able to visualize that. They also use vane rollers on the bottom sides of the vanes, that roll in a groove in the front and rear covers of the engine.
Excellent video! I’m a mechanical engineer and have been involved in compressors and gas pumping equipment for use in chemical plants and oil refineries for 50 years. The achilles heel for vane pumps is not just vane wear against the compression housing, but also vane blade failure, spring fatigue, and the buildup of combustion byproducts and sludge in the vane slots on the rotor causing the vanes to stick.
Though not a thing for automotive use, vane compressors are still used in industry with some regularity and many attempts have been made to make them more reliable. But still, this technology takes a backseat to more reliable designs - with all their weaknesses - such as reciprocating compressors.
Even in aviation, most light aircraft use vane style vacuum pumps to generate vacuum for flight instruments. But, they too are quite prone to failure which requires two pumps to be installed for backup.
Someone may solve these problems with materials and reciprocating vane design improvements, but it is still on the horizon and not here yet.
I had exactly the same idea when I tore down a refrigeration compressor 30 years ago. When I delved deeper I discovered a fella in Rochester NY fitted one to a motorcycle in the 1930s & ran it for a week before concluding that it wore out too quickly. It could be made to work but you'd have to lubricate it the same way as a 2 stroke engine, but then you'd have problems with exhaust emissions.
Exactly. These alternative designs pretty much always try to skip design factors that are instrumental in making piston engines balanced in terms of power, flexibility, reliability, efficiency, and complexity.
I have been looking for a analysis on this engine for almost 5 years now, thanks
"Things tend to not exist and not be used.... before they are.... existing... and used...." This is the kind of wisdom that brings me back to d4a, thank you 😂
Except that’s not true. In general, things get invented before they get made. Imagine showing an ICU to a medieval person he would say „great! Now how do we build this thing?“ and you’d have to explain everything from basic physics to metallurgy to them. Da Vinci also invented the aircraft centuries before anyone could build it. The reality is: if it would’ve been possible, someone would have tried it already. But nobody did.
First there is no mountain, then there is. 🙏
@@pengstirbkuchen5987 Just because something invented and a well design in the real world doesn't mean it will get adopted. Adoption requires enough people getting on board, all the kinks worked out, and the supply chain to migrate. There are a bunch of technologies that are known to not be optimal, but just good enough that to change it is seen as not worth it.
@@gljames24 But these rotatry vane wankers can't even be arsed to make a simple little prototype, they only make cartoons. What they'll find is any carbon buildup on the vanes will keep the vanes from responding quickly enough to properly hug the walls
@@pengstirbkuchen5987 what came first, the chicken or the egg?
I love your channel and you are so gifted at helping the average mechanic understand the concepts of so many different designs that I can’t help but think you could design something to overcome the obstacles to the vane engine…
Actually, the best type of internal combustion engine is neither a Wankel nor a Rotary Vane engine. It's a Turbine engine, for all the reasons you described.
A Rotary Vane engine is interesting, but I'm wondering what the wear characteristics would be like. The vane being a long lever arm is good for torque, but it also means it will need to resist a lot of side-load forces while still moving smoothly in and out to maintain the seal with the sidewall. They work fine for air tools because the pressurized air is providing a steady pressure with a low impact compared to the shock front of a fuel detonation. No contact seals work for Turbines because the blades aren't moving in and out. There's no travel, just thermal expansion to compensate for. It's not feasible to maintain a gap like that while the vanes are moving in and out at the rotation speed of the engine.
This could be more efficient with a higher compression ratio than a jet or turbine engine.
Turbine engines have been used in the past and are currently being used on the MTT Y2K motorcycle. Major down side is it a major hog when it comes to fuel getting roughly 4mpg city and not much better on the highway.
Efficiency isnt very good for turbines in general. You use a engine for work and efficiency is a pretty big deal when doing work.
Turbines are less thermally?fuel efficient that piston engines. by a lot.,
Turbine require constant workload to be efficient. This is why you see them with incredible peak efficiency but the average efficiency is very bad.
As a machinist, I have to say this: this design is neat on paper but would absolutely grenade itself. Anytime you add a spring loaded dragon into a rotating assembly, the centripetal forces will cause problems, in addition to the fact that there is not enough structural material to keep those fins from bending themselves out of the central assembly.
It is wildly impractical.
Plus as other commenter brought up about liquids getting behind the vanes... since they aren't 1 part, of course liquids are expected to go there and then pressure would just be way too high, making the friction against the walls be just too much to be usable... it's the sort of thing that looks good and that will work, but once you take a step back and think about it just for a second you realize that's not going to work...
@@Cuestrupaster why not design the vanes to have oils behind it? basically rectangular piston rings, and oil jets behind them making sure they stay lubricated? using the re-compression of the vanes to push the excess oil back through the system. structural issues aside regarding how thin the vanes would be and how they would be mounted, enabling fluids to pass behind them would probably assist greatly.
Disclaimer: I'm not an engineer, and my thinking likely is heavily flawed.
yeah, materials-wise, this set up just wont last, in a larger engine tho, say a ship, the issues present would have enough room for solutions like rolling guides for the vanes and enough material thickness to handle the combustion pushing the vanes sideways in their channels and enough surface area for a 'bearing surface' along the vane ends and combustion surface of the block, but there's still the issue of an enormous rotor weight, probably negating most of the simplicity-efficiency along with vane drag.
So extract the energy via Torque, and _then_ turn it into speed.
wouldn't it be easier to sacrifice some of that weight to power ration to fix these problems by using denser metals? and bulkier engine, plus springs will not be a problem as at high speeds the centripetal force of the crank shaft will not put pressure on the springs function and at low speeds a heavy duty tungsten spring will work fine
Sometimes it scares me how much in sync we are ! I’m literally working on a Rotary Vane design, a pneumatic one for now. It is so hard to seal it properly!
I can't wait for that video
Magnetic, maybe?
Small air tools use fiber vanes. Something like "tipping" the vanes may work for you. Super fine finish on the cylinder wall is important. Maybe bronze if it's only air
As soon as i saw this engine and people mentioning turbines, i was thinking of a video of you trying to make your own
I wonder if you can create enough compression to use diesel fuel.
Also springs for the vanes would have to be able to withstand the heat. If one of them fails no more combustion.
One question would the carbon created from the combustion be used as a lubricant?
Back in school we designed and built a rough prototype of a compressed air powered scooter. Our motor was based on a rotory vane pump and built into the wheel hub. It was kind of inside-out for lack of a better term, with the ouside rim acting as the rotor. We had 3 different rings, the two outer rings were higher torque for acceleration, and the smaller one on the inside was for cruising.
I am 76 years old engineering designer, I designed an engine like that when I was 15 years old. Then later I found out thats how positive displacement hydraulic pumps works
Also air motors and hydraulic motors. I have used all three in real world commercial machines I have designed. This video misses that vane rotor assemblies are relatively low torque, require vane lubrication, and are very sensitive to contamination. I used pumps like the Vickers V20 series for low noise circuits in an operator's cab or for air handler drives. Good stuff, but has to be applied correctly.
@@PatrickFrawley-h7f I spent years designing this before I found out it was 100 years old lol
It sucks lol.. i had thought of an idea for an externally adjusted flat slide carb.. then i found out lectron did it long ago lol
Impressed, really appreciate clever people.
So this type of engine is a hydraulic displacement pump in reverse?
D4E talking about unconventional looking engine designs? Sign me up!! Every time you upload a video about neat little engines and stuff like this it makes my day :)
Driving 4 Espresso wooooot
@@d4a man you know what this engine would be great for? a hybrid range extender! :)
Uuurrggh!@@Seawolf571
@@Seawolf571 Its D4A, maybe a minecraft letsplay is better suited for you
You might want to check patents as this might be infringing on the patent for a rotary vane pump. I ran into this and was notified by the patent office. I also know of a better design than this. Just saying.
I'm not a physicist or engineer, but the first thing that jumps out to me on this is that a vane type oil pump doesn't have to address heat from combustion. That floating vane will have the full heat from combustion, and it looks to me like it has a very limited time to shed that heat. That means the metallurgy of the vane and rotor must be able to deal with that heat without the vane expanding and binding in the rotor. As soon as you introduce contactless sealing such as an air gap or some piezo sealing, you've further reduced ability to shed heat because you no longer have contact with the mass of the static housing.
Yeah it seems like the vanes would need their own "piston rings" to allow for expansion. But lateral torque on a vane that needs very low friction just sounds like a mess. As soon as you put a decent amount of side pressure your vanes bind and you lose tons of power when the housing shoves the vanes back inside. Also I have doubts that you wouldn't have friction issues with springs that are stiff enough to keep a full seal reciprocating twice per revolution.
I like the idea and the problems it's meant to solve. I think theoretically it's strong, but friction and thermal expansion would make it hard to employ.
I think the Vanes parts problem can easily be solved by using a high-melting point metal such as thugsten. However i assume this would mean more free-play would be require to ensure the vane doesn't seize from thermal expansion.
Also, i think with a design like this you could easily have the center of the shaft be hollow to pass the intake or coulant through to help further cool down the vanes
you could make to vanes hinged flaps so expansion wouldn't be such an issue, would also solve issues with lateral loads. you introduce other issues though like hinge mechanisms in the combustion area.
theoretically though, it would have the same time to cool as a normal piston, yes it would be subject to combustion temperature once per revolution, but you could run it at half speed for the same power output.
@@nikeschndGood point, you could possibly have some kind of water cooling mechanism inside them but that makes them weaker.
Coat them in Gold would be another option.
I would personally still go with rollers on the ends, I would also only have them compress once per revolution, keeping it fully extended at the exhaust / intake section, would that cause problems?
Not sure how much exhaust gas would continue over or if that would cause problems.
Although you could theoretically use a vein pump further down the exhaust and intake pipes to cause a vacuum which pulls the exhaust gasses out and pushes fresh air in powered by the engine.
The vanes could be controlled by wheels but the vane guide needs to be inside the rotary mechanism. I can see that there may be problems with expansion and the vanes would need to be made of something like titanium to withstand the temperature. So two thoughts on this: first, the engine would probably be very inefficient when cold before the vanes expand to working temperature and a decent seal; second, such an efficient engine could make use of lower combustion temperature fuels like alcohols, thereby reducing thermal stress.
I love this guy. I wish he was my next door neighbor. He'd be cool at barbeques.
🔥 Totally! He cracks me up and he’s smart AF!! 😂
Big problem is the lateral forces on the vanes are so large that a great spring force would be required to overcome the friction caused in the slots and prevent binding and premature failure . As the vanes extend , even the smallest gap between them and the slots will cause the vanes to lean forward and bind . This “rocking “ motion of the vanes would be worst at full vane extension . I can’t imagine any lubrication system that could counter this , even with ridiculously oil rich fuel . Springs strong enough to reduce binding must lead to gouging of the combustion chamber. The thing would chatter like crazy under any real load .This design can only work in CAD with theoretical materials , lubrication and zero tolerances
Even worst than possible chatter, would be the possibility of destructive failure where one or more vanes impinged on the air ports. The entire engine casing would likely shatter.
Yeah. A sliding vane is going to be incredibly unreliable unless you happen to have perfect combustion all the time, every time. Otherwise you're going to have stiction and carbon lock like Wankels deal with. Plus the torque on the vanes are going to be under *extreme* torque during combustion, and that same force of the combustion is going to introduce vibrations every time it hits. You'd need to have at least two rotors firing opposite each other to cancel out those harmonics or this simply won't be as smooth as he asserts. And because the engine makes 4 cycles in one rotation the force is only going to exist in 90 (and really probably only ~30) degrees of this rotation and you can't just offset the next rotor to do that, you'd need to have the next rotor housing flipped and rotated to cancel out that vibration. One rotation per full cycle sounds nice until you're doing harmonics and NVH assessments, then you realize how much those "long" stroke times allow for timing of the whole rotational assembly to cancel out the other vibrations in the engine.
This is just a glorified air motor with a lot more problems introduced.
@@amani576 Astute analysis.
Expand the tip of the vane so it's not a point contact or like a tangent of a rounded tip. Put a curve on the vane so during the combustion phase the high pressure gas is helping to push the vane out. Expand the size of the central shaft without scaling the size of the vane up so more of the vane is inside the shaft extending the area of the force.
All ideas that might be solutions if someone spent the time and money to research, simulate and prototype a rotary vane engine.
Honestly, the entire time, I was thinking that all of the "problems" he was describing with current engines have already been solved, and we did it in the 30s. It's called a turbine, otherwise known as a jet engine.
"There is zero reciprocation"
The vanes reciprocate in their slots.
For a while, at least... 😆
And when they shatter they will destroy the engine. This is nothing more than a vane pump in reverse. I worked on them 30 years ago. When they bust they bust big!
They follow an elliptical path. Look at a Gnome piston engine used in some WW1 aircraft. The pistons appear to reciprocate but they actually follow a purely circular path.
No they do not. F = mV^2, they will not go back in real scale and rotations. If that is not enough - there is friction that you can not be compensated with oil by design. If that is also not enough, somehow - there is heat disbalance that will inevitably either lock vanes or enforce gaps that will let all the pressure out.
This whole video should've been an April fools' joke...
"There is zero reciprocation."
This unfortunately perfectly describes my previous relationships.
I think this reveals one of the big dilemmas of engineering: Do you start with something fundamentally inefficient but easier to make and then work to optimize it as much as possible, or do you try to make the theoretically optimal solution, even if it is extremely hard to make it work, let alone work reliably? Going down the first path can leave you in a technological dead-end, while the latter could result in a project being dead in the water.
The answer is going to first principle and figure out what the best engine is, not what the best combustion engine is.
Electric motors and batteries are the already established solution.
Do your resaerch, invest in Tesla.
It depends on the materials and manufacturing technologies available. Of course there were ideas about turbocharged engines and aircraft and ships even back in the first days of the industrial revolution, born from from equally clever minds.
Making them work is a whole other matter, because if you only had wrought iron and low pressure steam engines, flying is a pipe dream.
Agreed. The most "efficient" helicopter design is two counter-rotating blades from the same hub. But the complexity is enormous. Sikorsky basically said "to hell with efficiency, just stop the rotation caused by one blade using a tail rotor." Yes, the tail rotor eats up a lot of power. But it worked.
@@stanleygagner so which is fundamentally inefficient? If you look at the comparable configurations in pumps both are efficient, but in different use cases.
Exactly the same principle as in chemical processes: do you optimise the chemistry (what chemists do) or optimise the profitability (what engineers do). Virtually all commercial plants use an iteration of the latter. Pharmaceutical companies tend to use an iteration of the first.
My first car purchase for myself was a used Mazda Rx3 station wagon and it was so fun to drive with it's manual transmission, that a couple years later, I bought a brand new Mazda Rx4 pickup truck, the first year they were released, again with a manual transmission. I doubt anything could have been more fun to drive for an 17 year old teen, with it's yellow paint and black racing stripes, N50 x 14 inch diameter fat tires and soft bed cover. It looked great, and ran like a top, until it started burning a quart of oil with almost every tank of gas I put into it due to worn rotor tip seals, and trying to find mechanics outside of the dealership to rebuild rotary engines, was almost impossible and cost about $1,500 in 1977. If Masda came out with another rotary engine vehicle with even just slightly longer lasting rotor tip seals, and a bit cheaper rebuild price, I would buy a rotary again. They are just that much fun to drive, because the horsepower curve is so different than a piston engine engine.
I designed a few engines like this... and for several reasons, they don't work well.
#1- inherently low duty cycle, due to dedicated combustion/exhaust surfaces. Heat build-up in these surfaces presents an issue with both degradation and uneven expansion across the radial plane
#2- surface area to volume ratio makes thermal efficiency a challenge
#3- lubrication issues abound... with the only reasonable solution being vanes made of a self-lubricating wear material, and requiring frequent inspection/service/replacement
Of all the issue presented, there were a few I resolved.
1- utilizing technical ceramic (zirconia) for the casing and central rotor, relieved numerous cooling/friction issues... but the expense isn't feasible for mass production, and thermal shock limitations all but eliminate the possibility of use in frigid climates
#2- using arched vanes made of dense carbon graphite, and contouring the outer casing to permit the movement, such that one side is extending while the other is retracted, significantly mitigated vane control issues. Conversely, this created a tuning issue, as it altered the displacement volume between alternate vanes. It also did nothing to mitigate the load induced on the outer case friction surfaces, which increases at the square of RPM.
All this being said, a number of well-funded projects have addressed the fool's folly of the rotary vane engine. Most recently, RadMax Rand Cam engine oriented vane actuation along the axis of the engine, as opposed to radial extension. This allowed engineering around the dynamic load of the vanes in a far more manageable window. The engine ran, and was very smooth... but required more vanes to allow more efficient compression ratios. This presented two problems... spark management/delivery for gasoline, and injection issues for diesel operation. To my knowledge, only one successful prototype was built, and progress halted for numerous reasons. Nearly every internal surface required precision machining, thermal management still created issues of uneven expansion, serviceability of nearly any component required complete disassembly, and packaging for any reasonable duty cycle proved non-beneficial.
As stated, numerous companies have seen significant success in pneumatic expansion applications... but expansion motors don't face the thermal management issues of an ICE.
To my knowledge, the most successful private attempt at creating a viable rotary vane engine, was documented on the RUclips channel by RotaryICEman. Despite numerous running designs, and favorable efficiency readings, reasonable success was never found.
Very nice explanation thank you
Great insight, my first look at the design sees a huge issue in angular vane deflection and huge wear issues in the vane and rotor guide assembly.
Vane pumps are one thing, but with such loads in a gosoline engine would see a significant load increase on the vanes.
One thing that comes to mind is a perpendicular roller follower arrangement to absorb this angular deflection issue as the combustion pressure increases.
Thermal management now becomes a decent challenge.
could you use oil in the fuel similar to a 2 stroke engine to solve the lubrication issue
@@tysonwilliams-x4g wounldnt that make the emissions really bad
the answer to ur problem and solution i believe is ... PROBLEM: take spring loaded vanes on springs as bullet in barrel hence there has to be a muzzle velocity i.e. the tension in spring to keep it hinged with wall at say 12k rpm .. the springs tension is not enough to sustain that muzzle velocity in and out while spinning at say 12k rpm ... SOLUTION: sol i believe is to create wedge near top of vane where part of incoming liquid tucks itself under it and pushes the vane up along with spring's effort... or the vane has to be a say perm-magnet and and there be a 2nd electro-magnet in the walls to pull the vane towards walls at muzzle-velocity required at any of the say same 12k rpm lone spin/pass. I am using electro in walls as heat kills magnetism and perm-in vane as it will be hard but still protected in the hunk of round block...
"If it is so good why isn't it being used already?" Goddamn right. This is the first question to ask and 99.9% of the time the answer is out there, and has been for decades. More efficient, smoother, yup. No quibble there. The problem arises when you try to keep an internal combustion vane engine alive long enough to make it to the grocery store and back. Vanes make decent pumps and air motors as you noted. The problem is for a given vane depth/length from hub to chamber wall there are pressure limitations. Vane engines kill the actual vanes with heat, lack of lubrication, and side loading of the vane in the hub/crankshaft. Sealing the outer diameter (like an apex seal) is not too tough as compared to keeping the vane from killing itself in a hostile work environment. No doubt on paper it is great, and it has its advantages, but the real world is harsh.
what about an exchange service ? you make it to the store , get your groceries AND a replacement car to get you back home , where another replacement car awaits 😂
@@florin-titusniculescu5871If it were just possible to replace the vane unit by removing a few bolts then it would still be terrible, but a far bit less so, right?
Yeah, this engine design has been around for decades and is not really a new idea, comparing it to a completely new tech like he did is insanely disingenuous
Pretty much this. The reason why we stick with 'inefficient' designs is because of durability. Nobody wants to be bringing their car in for engine service every 10k miles.
Maybe because this engine's compression cycle ends as zero volume chamber?
I drew a picture of that engine in the 12th grade when I first read about sliding vane supercharger's. It's just a sliding vane supercharger run backward, and there's actually a more workable version which attaches the vanes to an offset hub instead of having them drag on the walls. But they problem is the vanes still need to drag on the slotted hub that they are pushing around.
Ever heard of the Quasiturbine?
I has the benefits of the vane engine but improves upon many of it's drawbacks.
It feels like we’re just getting closer and closer to turbine engines but refusing to admit it
The Ariel Hipercar (yes that's it's actual name) is a prototype which is getting close to being put in production and has a turbine engine in it. Granted, the turbine doesn't propell the car, but rather functions as a range extender. A very effective range extender though.
Turbines have a throttle responsiveness problem, and have already been done in cars.
@@brendonwood7595Sure. For range extenders, they still seem to be a very interesting avenue of investigation, though, since they don't have the same constraints of needing to run in synchrony with the wheels.
I see two other potential problems with them, too. One is the exhaust temperature, which is very high; two of the examples we have of vehicles with this configuration (a 1950s or 60s car and a 90s(?) motorcycle) were known to melt the bumpers of the cars behind them at red lights.
Another that I'm less sure about is the strength of the bearings when used in vehicles that experience significant bumps and vibrations in their intended use, like off-road or some industrial vehicles. Highly efficient turbines can tend to be a little delicate, I believe, and I'm not sure how much they'd like intense, abrubt movements on different axes.
Chrysler did it in the 60's and solved almost every problem but they couldn't quite get there. With today's technology we could. The two problems were emissions and turbine lag. Lag could be solved with an electric transmission which is a proven technology in locomotives and emissions technology is just better today.
@@brendonwood7595 The railroad industry has solved that for us, electric transmission. They use it because internal combustion cannot match the low RPM torque of steam which is very important in locomotives but it could also be used to solve turbine lag as well by combining it with a small high amp battery or a supercapacitor. As a bonus the generator and electric motors are lighter than a transmission.
My Grandfather, Robert Williams, designed and patented several of these in the 1960s and 1970s.
It was difficult to get vanes which would seal and also resist wear, not just at the tips, but in the slots where they slid. They got a lot of leverage pressure on them, too.
I wouldn't be surprised if some obscure motorcycle engine builder from Thailand would try to replicate this engine.
Literally any uneducated person could try to replicate it or make a video about how good it is.
Problem is, reality and wet dreams of incompetent people are incompatible. Same as eccentric force application and no vibration. Same as keeping heat disbalance and constant gaps. Same as high torque and frictionless moving gates.
They'll make a video about it, and you'll never see it again because they blew it up immediately after filming, and they threw it away.
@@cinnamonrollypoly That is why I've used OR instead of AND =)
This particular video is an example.
@@alsto8298 I wasn't responding to you.
there was someone who put wankels on bikes
Before I make a comment, I want to say that I love your videos. You do an excellent job of explaining things. As others have noted the flywheel needs to be better balanced or it will shake itself apart. The flywheel is setup for only a single ignition event per rotation and you need at least six ignition events per rotation. What I haven’t seen anyone else mention is that it looks like the output of the exhaust is aimed near the top of the carburetor. The problem with this is, as the engine is still experimental, you will probably have incomplete combustion inside of the engine meaning that at a minimum you will have hot exhaust gases hitting the top of the carburetor. This is dangerous. It needs a exhaust pipe to direct the exhaust gases in a safer direction. A six inch long tube of the proper diameter would probably do.
I designed but never built a similar engine in 1976. It had 7 vanes with combustion occurring in them every other cycle. This would have kept the engine temperature stable. Projected HP around 250, at 8K rpm.
My father passed before we could build it, together.
as soon as I saw the design I thought the big problem is going to be the vane system, sealing and friction, also the lateral force on the vanes, I wish I could research this Idea since i'm in my last year of mechanical engineering bachelor and I'm searching for new ideas in the industry. this channel has been a great learning source for me.
Sealing the vanes to the end cases would be a huge challenge too.
Look this design up in the electronic SAE library. Your school should have free access to it. This design isn't new and it has been studied.
@@corpsiecorpsie_the_original thank you for the suggestion.
@@corpsiecorpsie_the_original its possibly the oldest attempt at making a rotary engine, as its the simplest and most obvious route to take...
and they deemed it as useless at least 150 years ago...
people seem to be oblivious to the fact that pressure acts in ALL directions equally... theres no preference for rotating one way versus the other. and as the pressure only has a tiny area of the protruding vane to act against, and as the pressure acts equally on the vane at the other end of any chamber formed between them, the only force available to produce rotation is the DIFFERENCE between the two areas...
the pressure doesnt miraculously act on only one vane...
and to cap it off, most of the pressure acts upon the rotor and the casing, RADIALLY... all that does is produce pressure on the bearings...
the "mcewan rota mota" was an interesting take on the idea... was only ever a steam/air/hydraulic motor/compressor/pump though... and lamplough used the same sort of design in his radial twostrokes for the scavenging blower...
i cant find anything online about either except for a reference back to the very books i have describing them...
as a pump? theyre ideal, they convert torque to pressure really well... they fall flat when asked to do the reverse.
Those springs are already screaming: POINT OF FAILURE
The weights are tossed to the outside (against the cylinder) due to the centrifugal/centripetal forces thus there's no need for springs.
@@zolaQuela711what about during low rpm?
@@ArtemSayapov that's why you need an electric starter. The mass of each weight can be optimized.
Valve springs on common ICE engines seem to hold up.
The springs could be replaced by a hydraulic system
As a professor who has tried to design a real-world vane engine, you have correctly identified the main problem - centrifugal force on the vanes. I vividly recall drawing up what would be a great little 5 lb 50 horsepower engine - and then calculating that each of my 24 vanes would have 5 tons of tangential force on the outer chamber. Why 24 vanes? You touched on, but did not develop the side forces on the vanes. The high pressure in one chamber compared to low pressure in the next makes sealing hard and it also will deflect the vanes or make them :stick" in their slots. Going to more vanes solves both of these issues because it reduces the pressure differential on the vanes. This also allows the use of thinner vanes - with less centrifugal forces resulting. Vane pumps work well if they are pumping lubricating fluid. They work poorly if not. Combustion is the enemy of lubrication. But yes, I agree that if you can solve the vane engine, the piston engine will die!
One more thing. The active clearance on a jet engine is against a round, constant radius surface. The non-constant radius outer surface on a vane engine is an almost infinitely more complex problem.
Couldn't you use counterweights to reduce the effect of centrifugal force on the vanes? I think I remember reading using something like that to achieve higher RPMs in pumps.
A few things I have to say to the last part, the why it is not done yert:
The combustion side excerts pressure on the vane holding cylinder in the middle. This results in asymetrical pressure on the shaft. Wich means asymetrical wear on the shafts bearings. Wich leads to the whole thing not being able to hold a 3 micrometer seal after just a few hours of running at most. Even with hightech ceramic bearings and so on.
You would need at least a 4 disc version with 90° staggered combustion chambers to balance out the pressure on the shaft overall. But it would still lead to deformation of the shaft in the long run, again for the whole thing not being able to hold its seal.
And it would be no issue if the piezo actuors could be used to pull the vanes in, and push them out, and basically hold them at the correct position all the time.
The "problem" here is, that the forces acting on the vanes are vastly asymetrical, and thus holding a balancing act of 3 micrometers would be all but impossible, especially if you factor in external vibration sources like a rough road surface, the rough tire surface and the suspension and engine mounts directing miniscule (but larger than 3 micrometers) vibrations into the engine block. The acutors would have to get input signals and center these vanes at a rate, that can not be achieved if you factor in a sensor to detect them, a processor to calculate the movement, signal traveling speed at 80% the speed of light, and the acutuator acting on the vane to compensate externally induced vibration. Also the shaft in the middle must run in its bearing basically without any kind of tolerances, maybe in the nanometer range, to not translate any lateral movement onto the spinning disc and the vanes. The reason why it works so well in a Wankel is the excentric shaft and the moving contact point on the gearing of the rotor.
In theory, this could be built at an anstronomic cost (3 micrometers are higher tolerances than in F1 engines or the most sophisticated Jet Turbines, a modern car engine has 50 - 100 micrometers of tolerance between the piston and the cylinders, and the sprung ring running a oil film to center it dynamically constantly), and run as a single disct for hours, as a quad disc for maybe days until the warping of the shaft creates imbalance, and suspended on fluid seals or something, because the people walking by this engine would cause enough vibration to decenter the vanes and make them impact or leak gas. Or a truck driving by the whole building.
Thus: nice in theory, but with current technology and most likely ever physically achieveable technology (signly travel time at light speed as limit) not achievable for a vehicle engine.
And since the buffins at large motor corperations would also be able to think of that in a heartbeat, its the reason why none of them ever tried, and most likely never will.
The only way I can imagine to get the thing practial is pretty huge gaps, and a hydroseal by having the tips of the vanes expell high pressure liquid like oil or fuel, wich would be lost quiet a lot, and create a high torque, compact engine with horrible fuel economy or if you use oil, economic impact. But it would work (with piezo actuators holding a few hundret micrometer gap filled with fluid, wich can handle the warping of the shaft and shaft bearing for a longer time, and compensate vibrations).
Would it be plausible to electromagnetically "suspend" the shaft so that asymmetrical bearing wear could be mitigated and tighter tolerances of the vanes could be maintained?
@@yadidimeanmaine I doubt it
@@DerSpeggn Then let's forget about automotive use...
What about a boiler to run a steam version of this where each rotor has two symmetrical power and exhaust chambers as well as multiple (to a power of 2) LARGE displacement rotors for balance while running at low RPMs for use as either an industrial stationary engine or for large tonnage nautical use like freighters and cruise ships?
With each rotor having eight power impulses per rotation it should make MASSIVE amounts of smooth torque.
@@yadidimeanmaine a Turbine has infinite/continous torque pulses, wich is why they use them with steam.
Sounds like a time bomb.😅
Just FYI, pumps at gas stations are typically NOT vane pumps. Vane pumps do exist in what are known as suction systems, where the pump is in the dispenser (as opposed to the tank), but these are usually really old systems with 1 or 2 dispensers, and you will recognize them by the caucophany of noise and vibration coming from them. The vast majority of public gas stations use submerged centrifugal pumps in the tanks.
The private gas pumps at my place of work are vane pumps. They are noisy and vibrate like crazy. They've got little phenolic keys that act like sacrificial clutches to save the motor when they inevitably lock up.
GM uses variable displacement vane oil pumps on some of their engines. I doubt they make anywhere near as much noise and vibration.
I think he meant as the measuring device in the petrol pump, as opposed to providing the lifting from the tank. More a metering device than actual pump.
That would explain why a busy station with like 10 to 20 cars fueling takes so long to fill up . Only 1 pump , many dispensers
@@BestKiteboardingOfficial The design being used for metering gasoline would be inaccurate. I service Gilbarco dispensers, and their meters use 4 pistons laid out like a rotary airplane engine. Wayne dispensers have 2 pistons, I believe. However, the high flow truck diesel use Liquid Controls (LC) meters which may be rotor/ vane. They are expensive and never seem to break.
@@garyhooper1820 That can be true, but there are solutions. Newer stores may have 2 pumps in a tank, and they may have variable speed motors to compensate for high demand.
*16:40** I WAS LITERALLY SHOUTING "ROLLS ROYCE DO THIS WITH JET ENGINES"* at the computer when you said it - I had a personal tour of the RR Derby factory in about 2004
The single best thing ever in my life - utterly amazing. The grow the compressor blades as a single crystal
Everybody in aviation makes compressor blades nowadays. Jet engines are mechanically simple but material science is outstanding.
No they do not. The outer surface of jet engines are also circular. Very different problem.
@@sir0herrbatka jet engines are mechanically simple 😂 no the model you may see of how they work is simple actual jet engines are not
"The grow the compressor blades as a single crystal"
WHAT?!?!??!?!?! this is amazing
@@removechan10298 YEAH I know. They crate a ceramic mould with a long spiral on the end, they drop a tiny perfect crystal of metal, these were titanium, into the bottom of the spiral and then the pur in liquid titanium and then it goes in an oxygen free autoclave where they cool it over about 3 weeks and the crystal grows up the spiral and then forms the blade.
Ok this channel has achieved one more subscriber.
Really liked the content, keep it up, not much people talking about potential tech like this
look at this guy, looking down at piston and wankel engines like he's so much better.. so... vane :p
Ooooooh! Yo gotta start doing stand-up man
Il bet you think this song is about you 🎶
DON'T YOU!?!
@@brydenquirk1176You're right, it is about me!
might be vane but is it better than being piston broke?
The main problem with the Rotary Vane and the Wankel engines? Lubrication. The reciprocating engine has survived because it is easier to keep the "bang" away from the oil.
After thinking about this for a while, the biggest issue is going to be lubricating the vanes. Some people have already mentioned that one of the major issues here is getting debris and fluids in the vane channels. However, since the 'crank shaft' (if we want to call it that) does not spin in the compressor wheel, you have a lot of freedom to use it to supply oil as well as a provide weep holes. The key here is that you will need pretty high oil pressure to stabilize the vane in it's channel and to keep combustion from trying to escape through the weep hole. You basically have to make a hydrostatic bearing that also acts as a seal. Immensely tricky, but not impossible.
if it's possible you'd have to repair those vanes every 50 000 miles lol
@@TheIcyhydra technically that could be combated by manufacturers useing the fact that the engines could be a lot smaller and use the free space to designing the engine bay and engine so that it is easy to repair and service.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Maybe mix the oil in with the fuel, like in a 2 stroke? But then there goes your emissions. I don't know enough about wenkel engines, how did they solve this issue?
You don't need a sliding vane though. it can be hinged with centrifugal forces keeping it in contact with outer wall., you could even go really interesting and make it a curved crescent moon so when its fully extended it closes off the channel, and it hooks ridges in the outer case that slide it back into its housing.
Nice video, good explanations.
I bit of load can be added by turning on the ac on defog and also electric defrost, while you're at it.
Then again, you can install a diesel parking heater. I did this on my L200/triton and on my old beater dacia Logan. That way you raise the temp close both of the engone and quickly defrost the cabin.
1:09 If you would have arranged those circles just a little differently you would have had a wankel rotor!!!
That venn diagram was way to accurate. Thank goodness I've haven't gotten through Initial D yet 😅
I was entertained by this comment
Definitely 😂
I see three problems:
1.) Seal reliability. You have to seal around the rotor as well as the vanes. This is a huge perimeter compaered to that of a cylinder/piston seal.
2.) Friction. Keeping a tight seal along this long perimeter is likely to cause more friction. And all of of this is going the be difficult to successfully lubricate, especially where the vane slide in and out.
3.) Heat build up. There is going to have to be a way to cool the rotor and the vanes.
Already got idea for it tho
the rotor shaft can be wide enough to flow coolant through
Yeah, these are the typical issues that come up with this type of engine. I think I remember the Wankel being developed as a solution to these.
This is just showing how a simplified ver. Works. ideally you want both halves to be combustion so you need a parallel compressor similar in design attached to the same rotor then you want to have the vanes to be oil pressured and have a rotation to them to modify further the chamber pressure. Having all cycles in one chamber is over complicating it keeping them separate will be easier to deal with. It works for fluids because it is uniform and it doesn't for combustion because there are 3 cycles in combustion when you break them down permchamber it will work again.
The seal is not an issue. The vane is softer than the cylinder. The vane is the seal, and it is a wear part. That's how vane pumps work.
the wankel knew where it was because it knew where it wasnt
On the topic of that meme, I once read a "russian" version of the rocket story where everything was "It doesn't know and if it does it will be denied that it didn't when in fact, it didn't anyway".
It knew where it was, because it's always at the workshop being repaired
Don't underestimate the missile guidance system.
If the wankel subtracts where it is from where it is not, or where it is not from where it is (whichever is greater) it obtains a difference.
Fantastic video! Thank you for explaining rotational vane engines so clearly. It really got me thinking about miniaturizing and mounting them like electric motors to minimize gyroscopic effects in vehicles. I'm excited about the potential improvements in handling, stability, and engine efficiency this could bring. Keep up the awesome work - looking forward to your next insights!
3:40 check out "The how and why of mechanical movements" from 1967, page 206: 1964 Renault supplied a rotary vane motor with valves to American motors. 1967 P.R. Mallory made a rotary vane engine. patented by Wallace Linn and Gianni Dotto. Other weird engine designs you haven't covered yet are mentioned there.
I remember the Mallory. It had too many vanes, in my opinion, and it had an opinion it should blow itself to bits, which it up and did.
Congratulations! You just reinvented the wheel, er, water pump. Bazillion guys have tried to develop this since Ramelli invented it in the mid 16th century. That would include some major players including guys from GM, Deere, MTU, RPI, and "other" entities. I was on one of those teams. In short, it doesn't work, for numerous reasons mostly centered on the sealing mechanism, or lack thereof. Brick walls - vane deflection, supersonic tip speed, cooling, lubrication. Usable power requires either high compression or displacement, both of which vane devices do exceptionally badly. However, if you build a "vane engine" the size of a Ferris wheel and turn it at Ferris wheel speeds, it'll work but will still produce a fraction of the power and efficiency of an equivalent sized two stroke or turbine, both of which are multifuel. BTB - there are many SAE papers on this topic going back 40+ years for anyone who has a few thousand hours to kill. Oh, and, Felix Wankel likely didn't invent the engine which bears his name, he likely "borrowed" the concept from one of his assistants.
LOL. Same point as made earlier! C'mon, all those mechanical engineers at all those auto companies and no one looked at a vane pump and said, hmmmmm.
Despite your voiced disgust for "range extender" engines, that seems like the perfect use case for a rotary vane engine. Working essentially as a generator, it can be designed to run at a constant RPM. This eliminates the issue of the centrifugal force on the vanes, because that can be taken into consideration when designing the springs. It may have a bit of leakage while it's getting up to speed, but that would be a minimal time if the load isn't coupled immediately.
The range extender (hybrid) car is the perfect balance right now, given that a lot of electricity generation is still coal powered, and the battery range is limited. A hybrid only requires a small battery.
@@toby9999the fun part is that even if coal is burned making the electricity, the electric car still has a lower overall CO2 output over its life because of the efficiency of power plants vs the efficiency of using explosions to make circles
@@toby9999 Agreed.
I work on accelerating green energy and decelerating black energy ASAP. Reaching too low and too fast to eliminate emissions will increase prices, reduce usability, and slow emission reduction. This is simple math: As Y approaches zero, X approaches infinity. How close to the asymptote is optimal?
Range-extended hybrids are likely to lower total emissions faster than all-electric ones. Range-extended-car adoption rates will be significantly faster than for all-electric cars and not much worse than all-electric cars for aggregate MPGes.
They lower prices, increase usability, and extend the car’s lifespan with minor increases in operational costs. Range-extended hybrids have smaller, lighter, and less expensive batteries. They cost less to manufacture. The batteries can be used longer. (Battery range can degrade further before replacing the batteries. This could double miles between battery replacements.) ICE motors for electric cars are simple to engineer and maintain, particularly compared to hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and standard ICEs. They allow for greater freedom in car-body design and shapes because the batteries use less space and volume. For example, smaller cars could have similar cargo space.
The percentage differences in MPGe and fuel costs between all-electric and range-extended are not large and they are insignificant compared to the aggregate miles driven for all ICEs on the road. Remember, the goal is lowering total CO2e emissions ASAP, not lowering individual emissions.
They solve some of the biggest issues with all-electric cars: high-hassle, longer-duration, long-distance travel. They eliminate worrying about running out of juice and reduce the complexity of planning routes and stops. They will be used more often for trips because they will get you there faster. They ease issues with urban charging where people don’t have fixed parking spaces, or they live in condo or apartment-complexes. (This is a significant barrier to rapid green adoption.)
And they improve maneuverability. The lower masses with similar torques improve cornering while somewhat increasing acceleration.
For most people, range-extended hybrids "Just Work" as well or better than ICEs and hybrids. All electrics, not so much.
"Better beast best."
@@kentkoeninger7933 I'm sure you're a nice actual person, but this comment reads like it was written by a drunk AI
@@jeffh8803 Sorry about that. I take your point.
I actually like it when you explain secondary engine balance all the time, actually.
Pfft...HAAAHAAAHAASS😂
IKR, it's like watching soap operas in foriegn languages, my eyes glaze over, I don't get it, but I can't stop watching.
Pros: it's efficient
Cons: it's inefficient
🤣
Pros: It's efficient
Cons: Even in self-destruction
Pros its really economical on long drives and fun
@@Ryan-fb1otnot really
@@Ryan-fb1ot It's the opposite of economical, the engine is completely un-economical, which is why It never took off beyond a few sports cars that Mazda threw them in.
@@Knight_Kin 1.3 yes its economy powerful
Saying it's "pure" rotation while showing the vanes not rotating and instead moving in and out. Based.
The reciprocation of the vanes even though are self-balanced, are not involved in the actual 'transference' of force. The force generated is always 90 degrees to the lever arm and doesn't change phase as seen in pistons or even Wankel.
@@shahabsandhu4034Still gonna break in like 5 minutes, very good design👍
@@shahabsandhu4034 Yes the forces are tangential to the piston but the movement of those vanes are literally pistons. I'm also not sure how those will overcome enviromental challenges, how are they supposed to seal against the rotating chamber?
If it please you, just make the Vanessa rotary.
Exactly. The force of the combistion pressing these little plates directly towards their housing. That's gonna last long. For sure.
Can you make a video about Pneumatic Valve Spring? I think it is a fascinating technology
Pretty much a Sarich orbital engine.
Made good boat anchors
What explaining secondary balance a million times does to a man:
It's a vane-type supercharger. They have been around for 90 years.
Amazing job explaining this. Very interesting. I enjoy learning anything new about engine concepts
6:40 This thing looks ridiculous. You want an apex seal that extends via a spring? I’m sorry, we already have valve float issues on piston engines. We gonna have to worry about seal float now?
you could have a computer that moves it without a spring
@@beefsupreme67 The only way to do that would be to use Linear actuators. The fastest linear actuators move 9in/sec, about half a mile an hour, without load. Best comparison would be valves in your typical piston engine. For the average valve to avoid being hit by their respective piston, they have to close as fast as the piston moves, at the least. The average speed of a piston in a 2022 2.0 liter Honda civic, at 5k rpm, is 32mph. At a redline of 6.8k rpm, the average speed of the piston is 43.5mph. A computer running the fastest linear actuator wouldn’t be fast enough to close these apex seals. You could use pneumatic springs, but you’d have sealing issues with the rotor since it spins, and you can’t differentiate between which seals are open and closing, they will all be trying to push outward with great force. You’d be seeing a lot of power loss at low speed, just like you do with pneumatic springs in F1 cars. The engine would be a high revving one, simply because it would stall at low speed from the force required to recess the apex seals.
And that’s before you consider that the force on the apex seal isn’t just up and down(the axis the seal opens/closes on). Extending the seal out like that turns it into a small lever of sorts. That lever drags along the walls of the housing, creating friction. That creates a secondary force trying to pull each seal sideways instead of pushing it straight down. If the force on that little lever exceeds a certain load, then it snaps wherever the fulcrum is. That fulcrum is going to be where the seal meets the outside lip of its socket. It will break off at the socket lip, and now you have no apex seal at all, and a piece of debris rattling around inside the housing for the rotor. There’s a reason most apex seals are short, just barely peaking out of the place they slot into.
People keep trying to get the rotary engine to work. I get it, it’s more efficient to have the energy already be rotational, than it is to convert the linear motion of a piston into rotational energy. But we already have the peak example of a pistonless engine… it’s called a turbine.
@@Nikolai_The_Crazed YAP
2:07 I love more pah
18:05 I'm no engineer, hell I've got 2 brain cells left fighting for 3rrd place. But i see a couple challenges: First is exhaust, I can see potential power losses from the combustion phase pushing out the exhaust. Second would be ensuring the compressed air doesn't overpower fuel flow into the chamber and timing the spark for combustion. Like I said, I'm no engineer but at higher revolutions wouldn't we see a decline in efficiency at higher RPM if we're also pushing the exhaust out? Furthermore, I suspect there's some serious material science behind getting the seals right on the vanes, that's a lot of potential friction, little room for error, and if you're talking such tolerances for gapped seals how does it compensate for material elasticity?
I dont think there is much energy lost "pushing" the exhaust because it is not compressing it. Sure there is some loss removing the exhaust and also compressing the air but compared to other types of engine it is minimal. As for the seal of the vain it would be a perfect solution to not have any friction, no touching parts but still good enough seal to not mix different stages. Thats what he is also talking about and i would think is the main downside to the engine
What do you think happens in a regular piston engine? Im no engineer but any loss there applies to any engine. And the other claim is probably not a big issue. Everything like that is an engineering challenge which can be solved with time.
The other way to deal with that is a constant boost stream. Ie: a super charger would have a constant pressure especially with a thin gas non-touching housing rotor setup. That would also help with some control as it would create parasitic losses at lower RPM’s and allow for a secondary braking effect once going. Then could be a max RPM limiting factor as well (by allowing for only X flow). So the gains aren’t really from the device but more harnessed. You’re better at burning this and having less losses. Exhaust is always a loss unless you’re turbo’ed then you gain some or more back. But still having to add more fuel which becomes more and more “self defeating”. But the exhaust isn’t the problem at all. That’s like a non issue compared to a full rework design that’s scalable. It’s a great starting point for sure! 🤷♂️
Congratulations, you are no engineer.🎉🎉
3:26 you know what else does that? Electric motors!
No broom broom i cant hear engine i cant hear opinion😂
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that this is the kind of engine that Wankle envisioned when he first had the idea of making a rotary engine, but the main problem lies in the vane, this is why rotary engines have a shape like a dorito with a strange engine room shape, Wankle wants to eliminate the vane but still ensure that the rotor is always attached to the engine wall so that it is easy to seal. (And we all know wankle still failed to do a perfect seal)
Additions: If what you say about seals is applicable to this engine then shouldn't it also be applicable to the Wankle?
My thoughts exactly ...
You wouldn't want large vanes flopping around. Also the animation is a bit misleading with the vanes almost falling out of the center. They would need to sit much deeper to eliminated to decrease the effect of tolerances.
@@pugnate666 Not only that, but the central shaft has to be very heavy. The vanes would also bind in their slots, if not initially, once the engine began to heat up. This is a problem that current applications of rotary vane pumps do not have to deal with. And as others have said, the range of motion of a piezo-electric actuator is an order of magnitude less than what would be necessary here.
@@FritzAdler perhaps a lever arm could be used to gain the necessary travel?
Wankles work perfectly and have no wall seal problem.
agree. if you're thinking about maintaining a vane seal as it flies across a varying surface, imo that's how you end up with a wankel geometry. my intuition is that's as solved as this problem ever gets
My farther and I discussed the vane rotary engine in the 1960's and we also discussed the friction and wear problems thus putting the idea aside until technology could catch up, maybe it has and now is the time. It would be nice for an old timer engineer to see this before I go.
Well at this point I would say you're going to have to get around a lot of the patents that Mazda would hold via the Wankel rotary engine I know that it's a different engine but one component of that engine you may not be able to avoid using and or using some components and that component itself would be the emissions system you may end up in a license problem with Mazda I believe that's probably why it was shelved back in the '90s and no one's really messed with its sense at least to any great scale of a car company.
There's probably a way to adapt the pollution control system from Mazda's rotary engines but they're again you're going to need a license to do that or you end up in a lawsuit The problem is yes the cost of the license but you're also going to have to have a really good legal team to help you get that license on favorable terms and that's not cheap so the license itself could cost you I don't know 50 million but the legal team could easily cost you 80 million dollars now that's an extreme example but I wouldn't doubt if that's what they ran into back in the '90s and of course development costs in general as well as licensing fees would have more than quadrupled by now so even if back in the '90s you could have all of this said and done for $10 million bucks now it's going to cost you $40 million bucks.
You may not necessarily need a license per se from Mazda but I will say that if I were a car company attempting to fuck with this engine I would go ahead and try to acquire that license just in case we happen to even inadvertently make a little something that could throw us into a patent infringement problem with Mazda You're going to need a legal department and that's going to cost you before you even do the first bit of research and development.
@15:30 The problem of friction at higher speeds due to centrifugal forces acting on the blades could be overcome by electromagnets at the bottom of the blades that would compensate these forces proportional to the rotational speed. The blades could be made out of ceramic, their base out of magnetic materials.
As a physicist a small note. To say there are zero vibrations when substances are set on fire is impossible. But yes, the design idea would have probably quite reduced vibrations, depending on how the problems are tackled listed by the engineers. All in all an interesting video, thanks.
"Zero reciprocation" - d4a
*Reciprocating vanes in background"
The Vanes do not reciprocate, it is an illusion. It's more like the rotor is engulfing the vane. What's actually happening is the rotor and housing are converging, since the housing is larger than the rotor, and the rotor is offset. The vanes move thru space in a circular motion, as can be seen if you pay attention to the vane tips. It just appears like the vanes are 'retracting' into the rotor'. In the animation above yes the vanes don't follow a perfectly circular pathway, due to the 'ellipse' of the housing, so they are moving in an ellipse pathway. But in an actual vane engine, the housing is circular, which the vanes obviously follow.
I have nearly 40 years experience in hydraulics. Vane pumps have been tried in industrial hydraulics but cannot compete durably at the pressures that piston pumps operate at. And there you have fantastic lubrication at all times. I cannot see vanes lasting under the conditions during combustion typically found in an internal combustion engine. Nice theory but converting ir to practice is something else.
If this tech had been given substantial research dollars perhaps that could have been solved 20-30 years ago but at this point money is going to electric. New gas motors (even iterative changes) are not really getting investment since their are no longer much gains to be had without major redesigns like this it just isn't happening; big auto companies are not investing in moonshot projects. By comparison electric continues to advance and technologies in labs and prototypes now will make 1000 mile ranges possible; at that point and given all the other advantages why burn stuff for personal ground transportation. Combine that with the inevitability that viable FSD will eventually exist (probably in 10-20 years) and its a whole new ball game for getting around - ownership of personal vehicles will become a luxury.
@@ccibinel - this tech has received considerable research money - I know of 4 different research activities into trying to make this work. It would have been good if this presenter had conducted some basic research and shown all the examples of this idea that have been built and tested over the years. Showing the multiple failed attempts to make this work and determining the common factors that made all the previous attempts to make this work would have been considerably more informative and would have resulted in a far more balanced representation of the value of this idea.
I'm only a minute and 44 seconds into this video and I have already seen 3 examples of D4A's legendary ability to explain complex engine concepts and features for any layman to understand. Bravo. I've subed to this channel nearly 5 years ago and the consistency and increasing quality of your videos always astounds me. I truly hope this channel never dies.
I was going to go to school for mechanical engineering, but after watching his video I have all the relevant parts without the $200,000 debt and four years of time wasted.
@@ASDasdSDsadASD-nc7lfstill won’t get hired without the degree though good luck
@@ASDasdSDsadASD-nc7lf Then you really have absolutely no idea what tertiary education is. I suggest you go to the mechanical engineering school and study ... and discover that what you have seen in this video is absolute garbage.
About 2 decades ago as a mechanical design draftsman with equivalent of 2nd year mech eng and also obsessed with the idea of a better ICE with lower weight, smoother operation and torque, I came up with several iterations (unfortunately only in digital form, no contacts, money or time to do what I wanted to do which was get a prototype built). The 😮mdifference between mine and the design shown in this video is that the
As a hydraulic pump/motor this works well. The drive/driven fluid provides lubrication. As a gas pump/motor this still requires lubrication to be added to the gas. Much like the wankel rotary engine, I don't see this meeting pollution standards.
Used this principal in pumps for decades. If and when the veins shatter the engine will be turned to scrap. Not convinced yet!
If something like this rose to prominence wayyy back at the birth of the ICE vehicle, then we'd just be selling gas that's already pre-mixed with lubricant.
2 stroke oiling problem lol
@@dominicg2456 agreed, but that lubricant knocks it out of being pollution compliant.
@@oldretireddude Possibly, but if we had started with this all those years ago it's possible we could have a clean lubricant to use by now.
I love how a vane engine looks like such a great engine.
it is all animation, no engine was shown. at least wankels are real.
"looks" being the keyword here. Look at the Liquid Piston HEHC rotary, there's a reason they're in an exclusive military contract and not selling any to the public, since the military saw the potential, realized lightness and power density was key, and now all the military drones you might get a glimpse of that fly high and slow on propeller power are running one of their engines, and troops on the ground that need electrical power have a smaller generator that they can actually carry now which makes enough juice to do some work.
12:53 *near vibration free, those vane springs will vibrate at a certain rpm
What if they were pneumatic instead? By changing the air pressure under the arms, you could also keep it at a constant distance.
6:58 So, this is like an ICE version of an electric motor then...
Range extenders may not be sexy, but, since the 1940s, Diesel-electric locomotives have used internal combustion engines that generate electricity to power electric drivetrains.
+++
range extenders provide a charge to the batteries. diesel electric engines generate the power needed to the electric motors not the same
Because at the scale of trains, gearboxes get very heavy and complex as the torque is enough to strip gears of teeth
Submarines also
@@guigui78340 Modern Diesel electric locomotives have a batterypack to power the locomotive/train zero emission in f.e. railwaytunnels.
We use these type of motors as waste pumps on our fleet of septic trucks.they work great until the vanes jam up and we have to tear apart the pump and replace them. Ours are also centrifugal and the central hub is offset in the housing so that at the top the vanes are pushed in and drop down at the bottom.
Apparently, in the mitochondria in our cells, the last step to ATP generation, ATP Synthase, works like a microscopic rotary engine, turning ADP and a free phosphate into ATP, powered by the electron transport chain.
Did you see that on an Episode of smarter everday?
Powered by a proton pump. The protons (H+) are from the internal compartment of the mitochondria, pumped out into the intermembrane space by H+ pumps powered by electrons running through the electron transport chain. By what is essentially a combined proton motive force and a membrane electrical force, the protons return to the internal compartment through the only available route, ATP synthase, which as you mention adds a phosphate to ADP making ATP. by a rotating complex, similar to an electric motor with a rotor and stator.
Great desine , hope to see more about it , i have used the hivac pumps in the cleaning industry , it can suck and blow gasses , even watercooled and lubricated systems
Piezoelectric actuators don't move centimeters. They don't move even millimiters. The move like 200 micrometers... Which means 0.0002mm You just CAN'T control those veins with those. R&R uses them, true, but the turbin blades are not supposed to move like the veins at all, they use them to just compensate the microscopic play or the termal elongation...
This has the very same problems of the Wankel: it's a dry run and it destroyes apex seals...
200um = 0.2mm though. A little bit off. But your overall point still stands.
This. Why compare the simplicity of following a circle (close to constant radius) like in a jet engine with following an ellipse or something even more complex (radius changing several cm)?
Put the vanes on a path that does the majority of movement and use the piezoelectric actuators to offset from that path to handle heat expansion, manufacturing tolerances, etc
@@kllrnohj Yep, sensors are cheap nowadays
@@kllrnohj How exactly does one "Put the vanes on a path that does the majority of movement"? Are you suggesting two actuator mechanisms? Then the first must have an end-stroke accuracy of 0.2mm. Springs not work. Linear motors/actuators?
From a thermodynamic perspective, theres a TON of surface area there that would conduct heat away from combustion and leave a ton of unburnt fuel along the rotor and rotor walls. This is why DI in piston engines makes so much more efficiency. You keep the fuel in a column in the center of the cylinder where things are the hottest, and keep fuel away from the cylinder walls. You cant help as much the head and piston but it is what it is. Now that all the fuel is in the center of the cylinder, you can keep its temp much higher than the flash point so more of the fuel in the cylinder burns. Rotaries have too much surface area and the fuel stops burning because the heat gets conducted away too quickly. This is why they are dirty and fuel inefficient. What you need is a dedicated burn chamber where you can accurately control the fuel and air flow, and hopefully keep everything above the flashpoint of the fuel. This means more complication of a pds supercharger to bring air into the engine. I've already worked out a lot of the missing details but have taken no action to making a test unit because i just dont have the tooling or drive atm. I have a pretty sneaky automated start up sequence for said engine as well. Wish i could share it without someone trying to steal it. Lol
You can't own a concept, bro. Even patents are temporary.
It's not stealing when they can probably do it better than you, especially since you're struggling with 'drive'
That is why you have external combustion chamber, which is all of the patents do it. trying to achieve efficient combustion within a vane chamber isn't realistic.... this is just a cartoon like animation lol. Meant to illustrate how rotary vane is the best possible architecture for converting combustion into rotary shaft power. It solves all four fundamental problems of the piston/crank. And heat transfer is a function of time.... the vanes are moving far faster than pistons, and are NOT reversing direction. Far less heat loss to cylinder heads, cylinder walls... PLUS the combustion is expanded to NEAR-Ambient, with expansion ratios over 25:1, which means exhaust temps under 300f exiting the engine housing, compared to 1200f of piston engine, nuts.
no... that's not how thermodynamics work, fundamentally you need to understand that "combustion" is not inherently heat, its rapid expansion that then later gets turned into heat, the walls of the chamber wouldn't conduct anything away unless they were meant to work as heat conductors because there wouldn't be enough time in the chamber for the combustion to turn into heat and then dissipate into the walls of the chamber, in the vein concept the combustion is able to directly give itself more space until it gets forced out the exhaust, you know what that means? little to no heat deduction... the fact that the combustion chamber is directly increasing in size along the combustion path makes an optimal condition for efficiency and power that's one of the reasons we use them as pumps the liquid that is being forced into the pump can directly force itself out.
@@c1fi364 You've got that totally backward. Combustion is the 'instant' production of heat, which then leads to expansion. Scientists literally call fuel injection 'heat addition' when describing thermodynamic cycles. It is ENTIRELY about the heat. Pressure is a direct result of ONLY the heat created. Which is also why all combustion engines are technically called 'Heat Engines'. Once you understand what exactly 'Heat' is... kinetic energy of molecules and their violent collisions... and how that energy is created during combustion (oxidation of carbon and hydrogen), you'll get it.
@@wesleydeer889 Just came to say you're correct. Heat is the source of all expansion really.
this engine does have a flaw, which is durability. the metal attached the the springs would be under HEAVY stress at all times and will become dialoged/break if left unchecked.
What I think would be a better replacement would be using two circles and putting two rods in. The engine would be at the bottom whist whilst the the combustion happens at the top of the compartment. why not add compressed air and fuel directly? have the engine power a compressor which in turn force feeds itself. you may ask "but how would you get it to start?" its simple, its a circle, slap a "electric engine" on the main rod (just to start the rotation). heck, you could even make it a hybrid all within one engine compartment.
Thanks for your video. I love your enthusiasm and clear explanation of traditional internal combustion designs and major issues. The comments say it all. I taught engineering for many years and came to the conclusion a long time ago that the electric motor just had so many advantages, the world would be better spending it's time, money and energy on cracking battery tech. .... And in the mean time maybe the 'range extender' is not a bad compromise.
I'm ready to be bamboozled again.
Cavitation destroys hydraulic impact hammers. You think a vane is gonna hold up to millions of combustion events? 😂
Why not, an aluminum piston does. Or are you really assuming this cartoon like animation is how vanes would really look 😂
there is cavitation in a vane engine? since there are no fluids, i dont think there is no cavitation to worry about.
Is the cavitation in the room with us right now?
@@muffinconsumer4431 oh yeah, gaseous cavitation is actually a really real thing…. Occurring without zero liquid…. I wonder how that works
@@wesleydeer889 Hey genius, try reading up on something if you’re gonna mention it. Gaseous cavitation can only happen when a _fluid is present,_ and the gas is forced to dissolve into it. Completely different phenomenon, with completely different effects.
Sometimes a connecting rod can see a combustion occurring once..
🤣🤣
I once had a con rod see the rest of the combustion chamber when I tried to shift from 2nd to 3rd but instead shifted from 2nd to 1st. A Mazda B6 is not designed to see north of 12,000 rpm.
@@cam3002 "The engine uses a DOHC 16-valve alloy head with a lightened crankshaft and flywheel to allow a 7,200 rpm redline."
my grandfather made this design back in the
60's. He used a glo plug to try and start the combustion
and had a tube on the outside for increased combustion {i think}
neat how families can have so many near misses
First thought @4:04: Those "vanes" would make a seal difficult! They'd either have to wear at the tip or have oil feed to the tip (and sides for a good seal). Think starter motor brushes. Secondly, you couldn't completely stop the vanes from wobbling on the combustion as there would be a huge pressure bias. I think this could limit power. You could have a roller on the tip of the vane, but you'd still need to seal the inner side of the roller and the sides, too, and you're just adding complexity and lowering the life-span. I don't see this doing well because of these vanes.
About 1972 when I was 12, I drew up a plan for a vane motor like this one. After contemplating it for a while, I concluded that the vanes would be very difficult to seal properly, would have excessive wear on the power stroke and would probably float at higher RPMs due to inadequate springs. I still see the same problems.
you could connect the vanes to an external raceway with bearings, converting sliding friction to rolling OR rotate the elliptic housing around a fixed rotor thus removing centrifugal force from the vanes
These ideas have at least a bit of promise, but of course would add some parts. Diminishing centrifugal force by rotating the housing changes the picture considerably, but introduces complexity handling intake and exhaust. One can imagine diminishing the effects of the mechanical stresses on the vanes and the housing by adjusting the thickness of the vanes and their tip shape, as well as their metallurgy. Chamber shape might also be adjusted, and (sigh) a cooling system could be applied if necessary, though cooling is, essentially, removing potentially useful energy from the system.
Hm, does a vane engine need to be an internal combustion engine? Or could it be better suited (in some form) to use as a steam engine? We know that for decades at least, stationary power plant engines have exceeded the efficiency of internal combustion engines by a significant factor, due partly, of course, to the difference in size, and the constant speed of operation.
Also, we aren't by any means done with turbines, both internal- and external-combustion. And consider what various engines may run on hydrogen as a clean fuel. Lot of engineering jobs coming up . . .
The Venn Diagram while begging for a break is hilarious
At 5:24, you said zero reciprocating parts--don't the seals reciprocate? Remind me, what were the problems with side-loading seals again? I don't understand how you can look at a Wankel, understand that thin-walled structures loaded in shear are a problem, and then add reciprocation on top of it and call it better. Face it, until you get to turbines, crankshaft-driven engines are what peak combustion technology looks like.