Spain is Living in 2050? Revolutionary 1 Stroke INNengine Analyzed
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Published 2023-07-09
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Today I’d like to introduce you to a very special engine. It claims to be a 1 stroke engine. It has no crankshaft and no cylinder head and it squeezes out 120hp naturally aspirated from only 500cc of displacement and weighs only 35 kilograms. It’s called INNengine and it comes from the beautiful city of Granada in Spain. The engine has already been manufactured and it was even installed and tested in a Mazda mx-5. Today we will take an in-depth look at this engine, we will explain how it works and we will discuss its potential, its benefits and drawbacks and we will see what makes sense and what doesn’t.
First up, let’s see how this thing works and what makes it a 1 stroke engine. To understand that we must learn about the anatomy of this little thing. As you can see we have a total of 8 pistons in an opposed piston arrangement. Instead of a crankshaft we have this complex shaped wavy thing and the pistons ride on rollers along the wavy surface. As the combustion force pushes down the piston the piston pushes down on the wavy thing, as the piston goes down the slope it also forces the wavy thing to rotate. There are two wavy things connected to each other via a common shaft. All 8 pistons act on the wavy things and the forces generated by all 8 pistons are transferred through the shaft resulting in a single torque output at both ends of the shaft. So in theory you could connect a drivetrain at both ends. For example one of these at the center with an axle at both ends could create a simple, well balanced and very lightweight four-wheel drive vehicle.
We can connect a drive-train on both ends of this engine because this engine does not have a cylinder head and it doesn’t have camshafts or valves. So it does not need to use one end of the engine to drive the cams via an easily accessible and serviceable cam chain or cam belt. How does it work without cams or valves then? Well instead of valves we have intake and exhaust ports which are opened and closed by the piston, just like in a typical 2 stroke engine. At the middle between the two pistons we have an injector and a spark plug which ignites the air fuel mixture.
As the combustion pressure builds it pushes on the piston sending them outward. As the pistons move they uncover the intake and exhaust ports. 4 pistons on one side of the engine deal with intake and 4 pistons on the other side of the engine deal with exhaust. So how do we prevent exhaust gasses from escaping out through the intake and messing everything up? Well, we do that just like we do it in a traditional engine, by relying on scavenging which occurs when both the intake and exhaust valves are open at the same time.
The exhaust port of the INNengine likely gets uncovered first which allows the pressurized gasses to start escaping out from the combustion area. Since they are pressurized they escape rapidly and leave a void or vacuum behind them. This vacuum is at a lower pressure than the intake charge outside the chamber which is at atmospheric pressure, which means that the intake charge rushes into the combustion area and fills it with fresh air. The upward sloped part of the wavy thing then pushes the pistons back up and so they close the intake and exhaust ports and now start compressing the air. The injectors add fuel and we now have a compressed air fuel mixture in the combustion area and the process starts once again. The spark plug fires, combustion occurs, pressure builds, the pistons are forced down, they rotate the wavy thing and torque is generated.
So what we have here is a very simple engine without cams or valves but with direct injection, but also without all the deposits that accumulate on the intake valves, because we have no valves. So we have the benefits of direct injection without the drawbacks.
Bur this is clearly not a 1 stroke engine. Here we have the combustion stroke which overlaps with the exhaust stroke, followed by the intake stroke which then overlaps with the compression stroke. This is a 2 stroke engine, a direct injection two stroke without the emissions problems because the oil is under the piston and never burned, which I personally find more impressive than the 1 stroke gimmick. The other thing is the opposed piston design and this is an advantage because opposed pistons designs are more efficient than a non-opposed design. In a non-opposed design some of the energy of combustion is simply wasted on heating up the combustion chamber above the piston. The combustion chamber doesn’t go anywhere and it just absorbs the energy as heat. But in an opposed design we have a piston instead of a combustion chamber which means that more combustion energy gets to be transferred and converted into useful torque leading to improved efficiency.
A special thank you to my patrons:
Daniel
Pepe
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Peter Della Flora
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Joe C
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#d4a #innengine
All Comments (21)
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100 cars that changed the world: amzn.to/3DGXDf6 Stem engine model: amzn.to/3Y5iZLv 1-2-3 count with Car parts: amzn.to/3jxP7Z6 Patreon: www.patreon.com/d4a Motivation: www.youtube.com/channel/UCt3YSIPcvJsYbwGCDLNiIKA
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I was trying to think of ways that could build this engine into an actual torque monster. Thinking "hey, just take the pistons and rotate them 90 degrees, 360 degree placement around a central crankshaft! That will build TONS of low torque!" And then I realized I just discovered a radial engine lol
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so basically this engine is an AC compressor
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I love this guy I am hearing impaired and hespeaks slowly, delibertly, with perfect diction.
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I absolutely love your, " that's really great but wait just a minute buddy" attitude towards design claims and the like. A very humble but well educated and honest matter of fact approach and comment. Nice video as usual.
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Actual one stroke engine, mass manufactured and used widely in it’s era: the double-acting steam engine. Each stroke of the piston is a power stroke.
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Looks like a perfect generator unit for a hybrid electric vehicle. Electric motor will compensate for lack of torque.
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Love your videos and passion and the fact you seek to explain even the most technical details in a none baffling way
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I have enjoyed the video as always and as a mechanic/machinist/amateur designer, you never cease to amaze me with what you dig up and how you are able to explain it in Lehman terms so everyone is able to understand it .
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This could be a perfect back up engine for an electric car. Make it much smaller, make it run all the time at low speed so its always charging the battery. A great way to add airconditioning and heat too. This might extend the range by hundreds of miles and reduce anxiety.
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It's an axial, uniflow, 2 stroke, opposed piston engine. My favorite arrangement, but it's been around a LONG time. Hopefully these guys will give it the development time it needs.
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Thank you! Well done. Also, the comments section contributors are very helpful….”swash plate” is something I can now never forget😊
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Love your explanation and honest humble opinion. We need more people like you on the internet! Thank you
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Thank you for pointing out the error of thinking "if it hasn't been done before it's because it can't be done". One of my perpetual pet peeves. There are cases in history where it definitely looks like something wasn't done earlier (sometimes for centuries) simply because no one thought of it. More precisely, no one thought of it who was in a position to do anything about it.
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I immediately recognised this as an Axial engine and similar to a swashplate engine. These are normally always inspired by what others will recognise as AC/Refrigerative compressors and Hydraulic/Hydrostatic pumps and motors.
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So much to love in this engine! I notice that each piston pair fires twice per engine revolution, which is nice from the standpoint of applying shaft torques in opposed pairs.. but I think it would be fun to design the cam plates (wavy things) with three lobes instead of two (increasing the angle of their slopes, increasing torque output), and then using either 4, 5, or 7 cylinder blocks, so that there is always a cylinder delivering torque when another cylinder is in compression. The configuration shown, 2 lobes and 4 cylinders, relies on momentum to power compression, so the output is constantly switching from acceleration to deceleration, and a relatively larger rotating mass is necessary to dampen these pulses and provide the rotational momentum for compression. Using a setup where the number of cylinders isn't an integer multiple of the lobes number, would have the engine powering its compression strokes to provide smoother output with less need for adding rotating mass like a flywheel. Powered compression should also help the engine run better at lower speeds. I agree that their test drive description ("no turbo.. atmospheric pressure") was deceptive.. two strokes always require forced induction. The old GM Diesel 2 strokes had Roots blowers.. Mercury 2 stroke outboards (and smaller 2 strokes like chain saws, leaf blowers, and even tiny nitro engines for RC models and such) use the crankcase under the pistons to compress the intake charge and effect cylinder scavenging. A two stroke which relied entirely on port timing and exhaust momentum to initiate scavenging and draw in the intake air, would be extremely sensitive to exhaust tuning and engine RPM, and might struggle to run at all except under ideal conditions.
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I love your rational and completely unhysterical approach to evaluating these new engine designs.
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You once again break down it down to its simplest parts and call it what it is, a 2 stroke engine. I see this as being a great hybrid engine. Small, light weight and can run at a set RPM and get great fuel efficiency. Keep up the great work, and may God bless you brother.
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It's not just that conventional engines have so much research and refinement behind them, but they have inertia. Manufacturing capacity already exists, engineers already know how to design/adapt them, mechanics know how to fix them, etc... You have to make a significantly better product than an existing well established product. Being as good or a little better just isn't worth trading off all that established infrastructure
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This is actually a really cool concept. 2 stoke is the best stroke in terms of power output potentiential. Technology is now catching up to make some pretty awesome advances in 2 stoke engineering. Just look at Mazda's new valved 2 stroke... excited about that one!
