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posted by Dopefish on Friday February 28 2014, @10:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the rev-up-and-burn-out dept.

germanbird writes: "Jalopnik has an interesting article up about Koenigsegg's Prototype Camless Engine. The engine uses pneumatic actuators rather than a cam to open and close the valves in the engine. The engineers behind this claim that it can provide "30 percent more power and torque, and up to 50 percent better economy" when applied to an existing engine designs. The article and some of the comments also mention that some work has been done with electromagnetic actuators to accomplish the same task. It may be a while before this tech is mature enough for passenger vehicles, but maybe if a racing series or two picked it up, it might give some of the manufacturers the opportunity to work the bugs out?

Not sure this is on topic for SoylentNews, but the article brought me back to my introduction to engineering course in college. One of my classmates was a car nut and I remember a discussion with an EE professor one day about the potential (or actually lack thereof due to performance issues) for using electric actuators to open and close valves."

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by carburraetor on Friday February 28 2014, @10:43AM

    by carburraetor (2221) on Friday February 28 2014, @10:43AM (#8406) Homepage

    Two stroke engines dont use camshafts as well, they use ports http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-stroke_engine [wikipedia.org]

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    I build models that rarely hold.
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday February 28 2014, @11:14AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 28 2014, @11:14AM (#8417) Journal

    And again, there was [wikipedia.org] and now is this one [wikipedia.org]

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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 28 2014, @11:51AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 28 2014, @11:51AM (#8430) Journal

    Here's a clip of how 1962-64 Chrysler Turbine Car sound [youtube.com] like (around 2'45" you can see it being driven)

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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 1) by cwix on Friday February 28 2014, @01:02PM

    by cwix (873) on Friday February 28 2014, @01:02PM (#8456)

    Yes, but two strokes are notoriously inefficient, and polluting. You loose some of your fuel on the compression stroke.

    • (Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday February 28 2014, @09:56PM

      by Foobar Bazbot (37) on Friday February 28 2014, @09:56PM (#8822) Journal

      Two-stroke gas engines have those problems. But two-stroke diesels are very nifty -- a blower provides scavenging without crankcase involvement, and not injecting the fuel till you're ready for combustion means none gets wasted. (Most do have a camshaft and exhaust valve(s) for uniflow scavenging, but cross-flow scavenging is also possible.)

      • (Score: 1) by cwix on Friday February 28 2014, @11:23PM

        by cwix (873) on Friday February 28 2014, @11:23PM (#8879)

        Good point. I am actually not that familiar with two stroke diesels. I'm not even sure what the use case is for them. I will have to do some reading. Thanks!

  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 28 2014, @04:19PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday February 28 2014, @04:19PM (#8570)

    Two-stoke engines are horrifically polluting and fuel-inefficient. They have very high power-to-weight ratios, however, and are mechanically simple, which is why they're frequently used for portable lawn equipment (weedwackers, leaf blowers, chainsaws, etc.). However, they've been banned from some municipalities because of the pollution, and 2-stroke boat motors have been banned from many places for the same reason.