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The Britalus rotary engine was invented in 1982 by Kenneth W. Porter, P.E., M.S.A.E, of King County, Washington. It operates on a modified Brayton cycle, but with continuous pulsed combustion, similar to that of a gas turbine. It can burn most commonly available hydrocarbon fuels and features the high compression ratio (14:1) typical of a Diesel cycle. The engine is patented, US Patent 4336686 of 1982. [1]
The main feature of the Britalus engine is an enclosed barrel-shaped cylinder block carrying compressor and expander pistons and rotating within a compact three-lobed stationary housing. The pistons carry rollers that follow an internal cam, causing the reciprocal motion of the pistons for compression and expansion. The rotor is statically and dynamically balanced and thereby operates with minimal vibration. A sleeve pinion gear on the rear of the rotor connects to a layshaft spur gear and provides the output shaft drive to the connected load.
Another distinguishing feature is the stationary slotted sleeve valve enclosing the single combustion chamber, and its co-axial slotted sleeve carried by the rotating cylinder barrel. This feature enables the charging air to enter the combustion chamber and allows evacuation later of the products of combustion to the expander cylinders and pistons.
Similar external combustion rotary engines have been patented by:
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be transformed, by a connecting rod and crank, into rotational force for work. The term "steam engine" is most commonly applied to reciprocating engines as just described, although some authorities have also referred to the steam turbine and devices such as Hero's aeolipile as "steam engines". The essential feature of steam engines is that they are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separated from the combustion products. The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is called the Rankine cycle. In general usage, the term steam engine can refer to either complete steam plants, such as railway steam locomotives and portable engines, or may refer to the piston or turbine machinery alone, as in the beam engine and stationary steam engine.
The Wankel engine is a type of internal combustion engine using an eccentric rotary design to convert pressure into rotating motion. The concept was proven by German engineer Felix Wankel, followed by a commercially feasible engine designed by German engineer Hanns-Dieter Paschke. The Wankel engine's rotor, which creates the turning motion, is similar in shape to a Reuleaux triangle, with the sides having less curvature. The rotor spins inside a figure-eight-like epitrochoidal housing around a fixed-toothed gearing. The midpoint of the rotor moves in a circle around the output shaft, rotating the shaft via a cam.
A pulsejet engine is a type of jet engine in which combustion occurs in pulses. A pulsejet engine can be made with few or no moving parts, and is capable of running statically. The best known example is the Argus As 109-014 used to propel Nazi Germany's V-1 flying bomb.
An aircraft engine, often referred to as an aero engine, is the power component of an aircraft propulsion system. Aircraft using power components are referred to as powered flight. Most aircraft engines are either piston engines or gas turbines, although a few have been rocket powered and in recent years many small UAVs have used electric motors.
The turbojet is an airbreathing jet engine which is typically used in aircraft. It consists of a gas turbine with a propelling nozzle. The gas turbine has an air inlet which includes inlet guide vanes, a compressor, a combustion chamber, and a turbine. The compressed air from the compressor is heated by burning fuel in the combustion chamber and then allowed to expand through the turbine. The turbine exhaust is then expanded in the propelling nozzle where it is accelerated to high speed to provide thrust. Two engineers, Frank Whittle in the United Kingdom and Hans von Ohain in Germany, developed the concept independently into practical engines during the late 1930s.
The Brayton cycle, also known as the Joule cycle, is a thermodynamic cycle that describes the operation of certain heat engines that have air or some other gas as their working fluid. It is characterized by isentropic compression and expansion, and isobaric heat addition and rejection, though practical engines have adiabatic rather than isentropic steps.
A compressor is a mechanical device that increases the pressure of a gas by reducing its volume. An air compressor is a specific type of gas compressor.
The Ericsson cycle is named after inventor John Ericsson who designed and built many unique heat engines based on various thermodynamic cycles. He is credited with inventing two unique heat engine cycles and developing practical engines based on these cycles. His first cycle is now known as the closed Brayton cycle, while his second cycle is what is now called the Ericsson cycle. Ericsson is one of the few who built open-cycle engines, but he also built closed-cycle ones.
The Quasiturbine or Qurbine engine is a proposed pistonless rotary engine using a rhomboidal rotor whose sides are hinged at the vertices. The volume enclosed between the sides of the rotor and the rotor casing provide compression and expansion in a fashion similar to the more familiar Wankel engine, but the hinging at the edges allows the volume ratio to increase. A geometrical indetermination of the Quasiturbine confinement stator shape allows for a variety of profiles and design characteristics. Unlike vane pumps, in which vane extension is generally important and against which the pressure acts to generate the rotation, the Quasiturbine contour seals have a minimal extension and the rotation does not result from pressure against these seals.
A pneumatic motor, or compressed-air engine, is a type of motor which does mechanical work by expanding compressed air. Pneumatic motors generally convert the compressed-air energy to mechanical work through either linear or rotary motion. Linear motion can come from either a diaphragm or piston actuator, while rotary motion is supplied by either a vane type air motor, piston air motor, air turbine or gear type motor.
An axial engine is a type of reciprocating engine with pistons arranged around an output shaft with their axes parallel to the shaft. Barrel refers to the cylindrical shape of the cylinder group whilst the Z-crank alludes to the shape of the crankshaft.
A jet engine performs by converting fuel into thrust. How well it performs is an indication of what proportion of its fuel goes to waste. It transfers heat from burning fuel to air passing through the engine. In doing so it produces thrust work when propelling a vehicle but a lot of the fuel is wasted and only appears as heat. Propulsion engineers aim to minimize the degradation of fuel energy into unusable thermal energy. Increased emphasis on performance improvements for commercial airliners came in the 1970s from the rising cost of fuel.
A swing-piston engine is a type of internal combustion engine in which the pistons move in a circular motion inside a ring-shaped "cylinder", moving closer and further from each other to provide compression and expansion. Generally two sets of pistons are used, geared to move in a fixed relationship as they rotate around the cylinder. In some versions the pistons oscillate around a fixed center, as opposed to rotating around the entire engine. The design has also been referred to as a oscillating piston engine, vibratory engine when the pistons oscillate instead of rotate, or toroidal engine based on the shape of the "cylinder".
A rotary-screw compressor is a type of gas compressor, such as an air compressor, that uses a rotary-type positive-displacement mechanism. These compressors are common in industrial applications and replace more traditional piston compressors where larger volumes of compressed gas are needed, e.g. for large refrigeration cycles such as chillers, or for compressed air systems to operate air-driven tools such as jackhammers and impact wrenches. For smaller rotor sizes the inherent leakage in the rotors becomes much more significant, leading to this type of mechanism being less suitable for smaller compressors than piston compressors.
As the name suggests, gas turbine engine compressors provide the compression part of the gas turbine engine thermodynamic cycle. There are three basic categories of gas turbine engine compressor: axial compressor, centrifugal compressor and mixed flow compressor. A fourth, unusual, type is the free-piston gas generator, which combines the functions of compressor and combustion chamber in one unit.
The X-engine is a type of pistonless rotary engine manufactured by LiquidPiston of Bloomfield, Connecticut.
A free-piston engine is a linear, 'crankless' internal combustion engine, in which the piston motion is not controlled by a crankshaft but determined by the interaction of forces from the combustion chamber gases, a rebound device and a load device.
Internal combustion engines date back to between the 10th and 13th centuries, when the first rocket engines were invented in China. Following the first commercial steam engine by Thomas Savery in 1698, various efforts were made during the 18th century to develop equivalent internal combustion engines. In 1791, the English inventor John Barber patented a gas turbine. In 1794, Thomas Mead patented a gas engine. Also in 1794, Robert Street patented an internal-combustion engine, which was also the first to use liquid fuel (petroleum) and built an engine around that time. In 1798, John Stevens designed the first American internal combustion engine. In 1807, French engineers Nicéphore and Claude Niépce ran a prototype internal combustion engine, using controlled dust explosions, the Pyréolophore. This engine powered a boat on the river in France. The same year, the Swiss engineer François Isaac de Rivaz built and patented a hydrogen and oxygen-powered internal-combustion engine. Fitted to a crude four-wheeled wagon, François Isaac de Rivaz first drove it 100 metres in 1813, thus making history as the first car-like vehicle known to have been powered by an internal-combustion engine.
An internal combustion engine is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal combustion engine, the expansion of the high-temperature and high-pressure gases produced by combustion applies direct force to some component of the engine. The force is typically applied to pistons, turbine blades, a rotor, or a nozzle. This force moves the component over a distance, transforming chemical energy into kinetic energy which is used to propel, move or power whatever the engine is attached to.
Pressure gain combustion (PGC) is the unsteady state process used in gas turbines in which gas expansion caused by heat release is constrained. First developed in the early 20th century as one of the earliest gas turbine designs, the concept was mostly abandoned following the advent of isobaric jet engines in WWII.
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