Electricity: electrical systems and devices – Safety and protection of systems and devices – With specific circuit breaker or control structure
Reexamination Certificate
1998-06-30
2001-02-13
Jackson, Stephen W. (Department: 2836)
Electricity: electrical systems and devices
Safety and protection of systems and devices
With specific circuit breaker or control structure
C361S118000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06188558
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention concerns internal combustion engines, and particularly reciprocating piston engines utilizing scotch yokes to translate rectilinear to rotary motion. The present invention also concerns rail spark plugs with multiple transformer ignition coils, and rail fuel injectors. It will become evident that these improvements will produce a more efficient engine and lower the amount of pollutants in the exhaust.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
Many engine designs have been proposed over the years to improve performance and efficiency. The most familiar design is the conventional reciprocating piston internal combustion engine. It uses connecting rods to connect the pistons to the crankpins of a crankshaft to translate linear reciprocating motion of the pistons to rotary motion of the crankshaft. A connecting rod is articulable at both ends where it attaches to the piston and crankpin. The piston is connected to the connecting rod by a wrist pin that passes through the piston and the connecting rod. This design is known as the slider crank engine. It has proven its usefulness, but does have some disadvantages and limitations.
Many ideas have been proposed to improve the slider crank engine. For example: supplemental pistons and cylinders converging into a shared combustion chamber, see U.S. Pat. No. 3,961,607; connecting rods with a pair of wrist pins, see U.S. Pat. No. 4,463,710; and pistons with variable compression height, see U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,427. Many contemporary engines use multiple valves and overhead cams. Each of these results in a more complex engine having more parts and greater reciprocating mass and total engine mass. Further, it is unlikely that power loss caused by friction from the side loading of the pistons and the pendulous motion of the connecting rods can be reduced.
The scotch yoke has been used in certain engine designs seeking improved cycle dynamics over the slider crank engine. For example, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,485,768, 4,584,972, 4,598,672, 4,803,890, 4,887,560, and 5,375,566. These efforts though creative, either use many parts in a complex arrangement or contain certain weaknesses of the traditional scotch yoke design. The traditional design connects two horizontally opposed pistons by rigid non-articulable connecting rods to a shuttle having a slot which accommodates the crankpin of a crank shaft. Guide surfaces constrain the motion of the shuttle to a linear path and the crankpin slides within the slot as the crankshaft rotates through its range, converting the linear reciprocating piston motion to rotary crankshaft motion. The slot within the shuttle must be at least as wide as the crankpin diameter and at least as long as the diameter of crankpin travel. There are two competing objectives in the design of the crankpin and slot interface for scotch yokes, reduce friction and reduce clearance. Friction causes energy loss and in wear of the scotch yoke, but especially in wear of the crankpin, because its curved surface is tangent to the slot's planar surface. Clearance at the interface results in a loss of shuttle motion during traversal of the clearance gap, and in impact damage and vibrations when the crankpin accelerates across the clearance gap and collides against the shuttle. The effects of friction and clearance at the crankpin and slot interface are energy inefficiency, and excessive wear and tear.
Various methods have been proposed to simultaneously reduce friction and crankpin clearance. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 1,687,425 a spring forced lever presses against the crankpin to eliminate excess clearance. In U.S. Pat. No. 2,366,237 the shuttle includes a bearing block having a center roller bearing for the crankpin and side roller bearings to reduce friction between the block and the remainder of the shuttle. See also U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,685,342, 5,259,256, and 5,375,566.
New methods are sought to increase the efficiency of conventional internal combustion engines to conserve fuel and protect the environment. One method is to operate the engine with a much leaner air/fuel mixture. This will reduce fuel requirements and also lower the amount of pollutants emitted into the air. Various problems are encountered in the development of leaner burning engines. A much hotter electrical energy source is required in order to ignite the leaner mixtures and ignition does not guarantee effective combustion of the airfuel mixture. Lean mixtures burn more slowly, and have a lower energy release rate, which results in decreased thermal efficiency and an increase in fuel consumption. Misfire and partial burn limits are reached as the mixture becomes leaner. When the lean operating limit is reached, the hydrocarbon emissions start to increase rather than decrease as expected.
One solution is to ignite the mixture on a larger scale instead of at a point.
This reduces the distance the flame must propagate and minimizes flame quench by providing a much larger initial flame and greater energy release which will help ignite the remaining mixture. Many methods have been proposed, for example: spark plugs with two or three electrodes, see U.S. Pat. No. 5,394,855; ignition transformer on spark plug for a hotter spark, see U.S. Pat. No. 5,377,652; lasers, see U.S. Pat. No. 4,416,226, and 4,852,529; plasma jet ignitors, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,911,307, 4,041,922, 4,122,816, 4,760,820, 4,969,432, and 5,076,223; and radio frequency ignitors, see U.S. Pat. No. 5,361,737. These approaches are either inadequate or too complex.
Conventional mechanical fuel injectors are complex and costly. They must be precisely manufactured to deliver accurate quantities of fuel and require high pressure fuel pumps. Conventional electronic fuel injectors have a slow response time for direct injection into a combustion chamber and therefore provide inadequate performance at high engine speeds. The rail fuel injector that will be described is a type of electronic fuel injector with a minimum of moving parts that will use electromagnetic forces to quickly inject fuel into a combustion chamber.
The present invention thus seeks to provide a new and novel engine having horizontally opposed cylinders and pistons, a type of scotch yoke with self adjusting sliding blocks, multiple transformer ignition coils and rail spark plugs, and rail fuel injectors. The objective is to produce a mechanically simple and highly efficient engine having a high power to weight ratio, reduced friction and pumping losses, having a minimum of moving parts, and reduced pollution emissions.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The problems and disadvantages associated with conventional reciprocating piston internal combustion engines are overcome by the present invention which includes a 2-stroke cycle reciprocating internal combustion engine having horizontally opposed cylinders and pistons, scotch yokes and self adjusting sliding blocks for the interface between the scotch yokes and crankpins, cylindrical piston valves to open exhaust ports (or the intake ports) and maintain the scotch yokes in vertical alignment with the crankpins, supercharger to force air into the cylinders and scavenge the exhaust gases, no carburetor, no adjustable distributor but rather ignition signals within the operating range at a certain angle before top dead center regardless of engine speed, capacitive discharge ignition system using multiple transformer ignition coils for each cylinder and rail spark plugs with multiple rails to ignite very lean air/fuel mixtures, and capacitive discharge system with rail fuel injectors to supply the required amount of fuel into each cylinder at the proper time.
The proposed railgun spark plugs or railplugs of the present invention operate on electromagnetic principles, which may produce electromagnetic forces many times greater than thermal expansion forces. By supplying current to electrodes or rails, current flowing in the rails creates an electromagnetic field between the rails in the railplug. The interaction of this field with the plasma current creates a J×B electro
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