George Bailey Brayton | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 3 October 1830 |
| Died | 17 December 1892 (aged 62) |
| Nationality | American |
George Bailey Brayton (1830-1892) was an American mechanical engineer and inventor. He was noted for introducing the constant pressure engine that is the basis for the gas turbine, and which is now referred to as the Brayton cycle.
In 1872 George Brayton patented a constant pressure internal combustion engine, initially using vaporized gas but later using liquid fuels such as kerosene and oil, known as Brayton's Ready Motor, [1] [2] The engine used one cylinder for compression, a receiver reservoir, and a separate power/expander cylinder in which the products of combustion expanded for the power stroke. The significant difference from other piston driven internal combustion engines is that the two cylinders are arranged so that the fuel/air mixture burns progressively at constant pressure as it is transferred from the compressor cylinder and reservoir to the working/expansion cylinder. In the original version a gas/air mixture was created by a vapor carburetor, [3] then compressed and stored in a reservoir where it was ignited and then introduced into an expansion cylinder. A metal gauze/mesh was used to prevent the combustion running back to the reservoir. However at times the mesh failed, leading to flash-back or explosion. In 1874 Brayton filed a patent for a liquid fuel injection system. In this version, fuel was introduced as the air passed into the expansion cylinder, thus eliminating the explosion problem. [4] Ignition remained a pilot flame. The principle was referred to as constant pressure combustion, and had been attempted without success by Sir William Siemens c1861 using a 4-cylinder engine with a separate combustion chamber. Brayton not only achieved success in making the constant pressure cycle work, but he also made and marketed a commercial product.
Brayton cycle engines were some of the first engines to be used for motive power. In 1881 John Philip Holland used a Brayton engine to power the world's first successful self-propelled submarine, the Fenian Ram. [5]
Also the Selden auto of 1878 used a Brayton cycle engine. This design never actually ran. When the Brayton engine was applied to an omnibus in 1878 as part of a project between Brayton and the engineers George and James Fawcett the latter described the attempt as a 'complete failure'. [6]
The engine's cycle of operations including sectional drawings and indicator diagrams for both gas and petroleum fueled versions. Details of the way the liquid fuel was introduced are described over 11 pages of Dugald Clerk's book Gas and Oil Engines. [7] The petroleum engine in these tests was made by the "New York and New Jersey Ready Motor Company". This is followed by a similar analysis of Simon's engine which was an adaptation of the Brayton engine made by Louis Simon & Sons, in Nottingham, UK and marketed as The Eclipse Silent Gas Engine. The Simon engine had an added complexity in that it injected some of the water/steam heated by the engine/exhaust into the engine. The indicator diagrams for this engine are also reported by Dugald Clerk and show that the addition of the water has little merit in terms of power production, the cooling of the gases and expansion of the steam compensating for each other.
Because the Brayton engine had a slow progressive burn of the fuel/air mixture it was possible to maintain a pilot flame, and so the engine, once lit, needed no form of ignition system. [8] The measured efficiency of the gas engine was intermediate between that of the Lenoir/Hugon engines, and the Otto & Langen atmospheric engine, but the liquid fueled Brayton engine had an advantage in not requiring a gas supply.
The early Brayton gas engine had the engine speed governed by varying the point of cut-off for the admission of the combusted gases into the power cylinder, and the admissions of gas and air to the pump was similarly regulated to maintain the reservoir pressure. The liquid fueled engine reported by Clerk only regulated the cut-off to the power cylinder, and used a pressure relief valve to limit the reservoir air pressure. The reservoir on the Brayton engine allowed it to be readily started if it remained pressurized, though Clerk states that "leakage and loss were so frequent that the apparatus was of little use." [7]
Brayton's engine was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and the Simon variant was displayed at the 1878 Paris Exhibition, and for a few years was well regarded, but within a short time the Otto engine became more popular. However, it was considered the first safe and practical oil engine and also served as inspiration to George B. Selden. As a production engine the design evolved over time, and according to Henry de Graffigny in Gas and Petroleum Engines, it was available in both vertical and horizontal forms. [9]
A Brayton Engine is preserved in the Smithsonian Institution in the American History museum, and a later Brayton engine which powered one of John Philip Holland's early submarines is preserved in the Paterson Museum in the Old Great Falls Historic District of Paterson, New Jersey. [10]
In 1887 Brayton constructed a 4 stroke engine that used a glowing platinum igniter as a source for ignition and a metered pressurized injection system with an oil atomizing direct fuel injector (U.S. patent #432,114). Brayton states: “I have discovered that heavy oils can be mechanically converted into a finely divided condition within a firing portion of the cylinder, or in a communicating firing chamber.” Another part reads, “I have for the first time, so far as my knowledge extends, regulated speed by variably controlling the direct discharge of liquid fuel into the combustion chamber or cylinder into a finely divided condition highly favorable to immediate combustion.” This was likely the first engine to use a lean-burn system to regulate engine speed and output. In this manner, the engine fired on every power stroke and speed and output were controlled solely by the quantity of fuel injected. Bosch later further developed this type of metered injection system. In 1890 Brayton filed a patent (granted in 1892) for another 4 stroke engine with an air blast fuel injection system ( U.S. patent# 432,260) . Rudolf Diesel's first engines used an air blast atomization system that was very similar to Brayton's . Unlike Diesel's engine Brayton's engine was fairly low compression. The ignition source was a constantly glowing mesh of platinum. [11] [12]
The compression ratio is the ratio between the volume of the cylinder and combustion chamber in an internal combustion engine at their maximum and minimum values.
The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is called a compression-ignition engine. This contrasts with engines using spark plug-ignition of the air-fuel mixture, such as a petrol engine or a gas engine.
A two-strokeengine is a type of internal combustion engine that completes a power cycle with two strokes of the piston during one power cycle, this power cycle being completed in one revolution of the crankshaft. A four-stroke engine requires four strokes of the piston to complete a power cycle during two crankshaft revolutions. In a two-stroke engine, the end of the combustion stroke and the beginning of the compression stroke happen simultaneously, with the intake and exhaust functions occurring at the same time.
A stratified charge engine describes a certain type of internal combustion engine, usually spark ignition (SI) engine that can be used in trucks, automobiles, portable and stationary equipment. The term "stratified charge" refers to the working fluids and fuel vapors entering the cylinder. Usually the fuel is injected into the cylinder or enters as a fuel rich vapor where a spark or other means are used to initiate ignition where the fuel rich zone interacts with the air to promote complete combustion. A stratified charge can allow for slightly higher compression ratios without "knock," and leaner air/fuel ratio than in conventional internal combustion engines.
A four-strokeengine is an internal combustion (IC) engine in which the piston completes four separate strokes while turning the crankshaft. A stroke refers to the full travel of the piston along the cylinder, in either direction. The four separate strokes are termed:
Nicolaus August Otto was a German engineer who successfully developed the compressed charge internal combustion engine which ran on petroleum gas and led to the modern internal combustion engine. The Association of German Engineers (VDI) created DIN standard 1940 which says "Otto Engine: internal combustion engine in which the ignition of the compressed fuel-air mixture is initiated by a timed spark", which has been applied to all engines of this type since.
The Brayton cycle is a thermodynamic cycle that describes the operation of certain heat engines that have air or some other gas as their working fluid. The original Brayton Ready Motor used a piston compressor and piston expander, but modern gas turbine engines and airbreathing jet engines also follow the Brayton cycle. Although the cycle is usually run as an open system, it is conventionally assumed for the purposes of thermodynamic analysis that the exhaust gases are reused in the intake, enabling analysis as a closed system.
William Hall Barnett is described as a 'founder' in his 1836 patent, and an 'ironfounder' in his 1838 patent, and later as an engineer and gas engineer, working in Brighton, UK. He worked for many years for the Brighton and Hove General Gas Company. He was born in Bradford and died in Brighton.
Herbert Akroyd-Stuart was an English inventor who is noted for his invention of the hot bulb engine, or heavy oil engine.
Sir Dugald Clerk KBE, LLD FRS was a Scottish engineer who designed the world's first successful two-stroke engine in 1878 and patented it in England in 1881. He was a graduate of Anderson's University in Glasgow, and Yorkshire College, Leeds. He formed the intellectual property firm with George Croydon Marks, called Marks & Clerk. He was knighted on 24 August 1917.
The hot-bulb engine, also known as a semi-diesel, is a type of internal combustion engine in which fuel ignites by coming in contact with a red-hot metal surface inside a bulb, followed by the introduction of air (oxygen) compressed into the hot-bulb chamber by the rising piston. There is some ignition when the fuel is introduced, but it quickly uses up the available oxygen in the bulb. Vigorous ignition takes place only when sufficient oxygen is supplied to the hot-bulb chamber on the compression stroke of the engine.
The term six-stroke engine has been applied to a number of alternative internal combustion engine designs that attempt to improve on traditional two-stroke and four-stroke engines. Claimed advantages may include increased fuel efficiency, reduced mechanical complexity, and/or reduced emissions. These engines can be divided into two groups based on the number of pistons that contribute to the six strokes.
The Hornsby-Akroyd oil engine, named after its inventor Herbert Akroyd Stuart and the manufacturer Richard Hornsby & Sons, was the first successful design of an internal combustion engine using heavy oil as a fuel. It was the first to use a separate vapourising combustion chamber and is the forerunner of all hot-bulb engines, which are considered predecessors of the similar Diesel engine, developed a few years later.
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 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.
Internal combustion engines come in a wide variety of types, but have certain family resemblances, and thus share many common types of components.
Lemuel Wellman Wright was an inventor who was active in the early 19th century. He was born in Plainfield, New Hampshire, and educated at Haverhill, New Hampshire. He then took a raft down the Connecticut River to Middletown, Connecticut, where he learned the clockmaker trade. He opened a clock-making shop in New York City before accepting a position to introduce American textile manufacturing machinery to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He remained in the British Isles from 1816 until returning to New York in 1857. The name Lemuel Wellman Wright is recorded in the British patent index for the patents listed below, but some texts use Lemuel Willman Wright to refer to the author of the same patents. There are contemporary references to an American from Massachusetts, Lemuel William Wright, who patented machinery and created a factory to make pins in London. The patent subject index lists the author of a patent for making pins in 1824 as Lemuel Wellman Wright, and has no other similar names recorded related to pins, so unless the patent office publication is in error, all these references appear to be to the same inventor.
Pierre Hugon is mainly known through his contribution to the early internal combustion engine, especially the "Hugon" engine, which was the second internal combustion engine to go into commercial production - and was a stationary engine along similar lines to the earlier "Lenoir" engine. According to various patents and other entries Pierre Hugon is variously described as a "Civil Engineer", and also as "directeur de la Compagnie du Gaz de Paris". In 1866 the London Gazette informs us that he is resident in Paris at 56 Rue de l'Orient, and in his US patent of 1874 he is still listed as a resident of Paris.
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.
The five-stroke engine is a compound internal combustion engine patented by Gerhard Schmitz in 2000. Schmitz's concept is being developed by Ilmor Engineering. Ilmor's prototype is an internal combustion engine that uses a solid cylinder block with electric motors driving the oil and water cooling pumps. The prototype uses two overhead camshafts with standard poppet valves. The five-stroke prototype engine is turbocharged. The goal of the five-stroke engine is to have higher efficiency with lower fuel use. In order to increase efficiency, a secondary cylinder is added as an expansion processor to extract more energy from the fuel.
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