Power plants – Combustion products used as motive fluid – Combustion products generator
Patent
1998-01-16
2000-03-14
Kim, Tae Jun
Power plants
Combustion products used as motive fluid
Combustion products generator
60 3938, 60 3976, F02C 502
Patent
active
060356308
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
The invention relates generally to internal combustion engines, and has particular reference to a rotary engine, especially a rotary engine of the type set forth in the preamble of the attached claim 1.
BACKGROUND ART
One of the tendencies of improving the overall efficiency of traditional volumetric displacement internal combustion engines has been the replacement of the reciprocating pistons of such engines by rotary pistons capable of converting the energy content of the expanding high pressure combustion gases into a direct rotary movement of a driving shaft. The rotary piston engine known as the Wankel engine has been developed furthest in this field, but has not managed to supplant the reciprocating engine due to problems with e.g., sealing materials. Other attempts have been aiming at the development of rotary engines in which a rotor is driven by at least one jet stream of expanding gases which exert a tangential pressure on the circumference of the rotor whereby a part of the energy content of the expanding gas is converted into a driving torque acting on said rotor. Examples of engines of the kind concerned are turbines, especially gas turbines that have found wide-spread application in certain well defined areas. Mainly from literature, designs of internal combustion rotary engines have become known in which a rotor is driven by a continuous series of impulses of expanding combustion gases.
A known prior art device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,590,761 granted to Zeftner, comprises spaced combustion chambers with recesses therebetween that are arranged around the outer circumference of a rotor. Each recess serves as an expansion chamber for a jet of gas produced by combustion in an associated combustion chamber. A stator has at its inner circumference, retractable reaction members which are movable into the recesses to be acted on by the gas jet so as to create forces acting in opposite sense on the rotor and stator and thus cause the rotor to rotate. This known device seems to be too elaborate since it comprises a large number of cam-controlled movable component parts, and since fuel combustion is performed in open chambers of throttled discharge openings only, the thermal efficiency may also be not sufficiently high for the engine to be viable of practical application.
Another device of the type concerned is disclosed in the published German patent specification DE 1 601 577 A2. The device disclosed herein comprises two equidistantly spaced combustion chambers arranged in a stator along its circumference. Combustion gases generated in these combustion chambers are discharged, at pre-determined intervals into a generally snake-shaped expansion duct which is confined by curved wall partitions of chambers certain parts of which being arranged in both, a rotor of the engine and in said stator. When the engine is supposed to be in operation, said chambers become connected with each other in sequence so that multiple and subsequent expansions of the combustion gaseswould exert alternating active and reactive tangential driving impulses onto the rotor. The expanded combustion gases are finally vented via a duct through the stator in the ambient atmosphere. Considerations given to the disclosed device allow for the conclusion that the device would hardly be capable of practical operation at least in the sense of supplying a driving torque that could be utilised at viable efficiency. The generally snake-shaped expansion duct seems to be too long and too voluminous. In such an expansion duct a permanent counter pressure of substantially constant level may be generated. During the relatively long periods between the successive combustion impulses in the chambers the combustion gases present in said duct may come to a quasi-stagnation. The rate of flow of the gas through said expansion duct is expected to be substantially low because said too long intervals and the relatively large volume of the expansion duct allow for a low velocity, slow release of the expanded combustion gases in th
REFERENCES:
patent: 547414 (1895-10-01), Bordman
patent: 820838 (1906-05-01), Moss
patent: 1174439 (1916-03-01), Pelley
patent: 1200133 (1916-10-01), Reed
patent: 1388371 (1921-08-01), Pierce
patent: 2320391 (1943-06-01), Wakefield
patent: 4365472 (1982-12-01), Ogata
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