Swashplate motor

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3D animation of a swashplate motor
animated functional principle of a swash plate motor

A swash plate motor is a reciprocating piston engine that has a swash plate instead of the usual crankshaft. The conversion of the oscillating piston movement into a rotating movement, which can then be used for the drive, is carried out by the swash plate, which is mounted in a z-shaped cranked shaft. HS Smallbone received the first patent for a swash plate motor as early as 1906. This type of motor only became known through the Bristol swash plate motor in the 1930s, with ring slide control instead of the valves. In some hydraulic pumps , the principle of the swash plate as the swash plate machine or bent axis machine still used today. Due to the swashplate, there are serious design changes to the main components of an internal combustion engine.

Components

The main components of a swash plate motor:

  • The swash plate
    is rotatably connected to the journal of the Z-shaped cranked (crank) shaft by a bearing. However, the swash plate itself must not rotate on its own axis and must therefore be supported by a suitable device (torque support).
  • The rotary movement of the z-shaped (crank) shaft
    moves the outer point of the swash plate with the ball joint up and down on a cam track (red line in the functional principle illustration).
  • The ball joint
    can only be produced with great effort in terms of production engineering and is also difficult to lubricate effectively.
  • The connecting rod that
    transmits the reciprocating piston movement requires a ball joint at both ends.
  • A piston also
    requires a ball joint and can therefore only be manufactured to a limited extent on conventional production machines. With regard to the forces to be absorbed, such a piston deviates considerably from the design of conventional pistons due to the ball joint.
  • The cylinders
    are arranged in a ring around the shaft. In the case of a conventional valve control , considerable structural problems have to be solved due to the resulting limited space.

Regardless of the structural problems listed, a swash plate motor was a very interesting alternative to conventional motor constructions. Motor vibrations due to free masses that are difficult to compensate for do not occur.

Application examples

  • In the Museum of Elsbett Motors, an engine block of a double-acting swashplate aero engine is exhibited. A prototype of the 14-cylinder motor swash plate on the principle of swash plate machine was built, but never used.
  • A modified variant of the swash plate motor is the Strahm motor developed by Anton Strahm and named after him. With this, the (8-shaped) wobbling movement of the cylinder makes the connecting rod required due to the cam track superfluous.
  • Tilkin motorcycle: Félix-Georges Tilkin developed a motorcycle with a 6-cylinder two-stroke swash plate engine in 1957.
  • A four-cylinder swash plate Stirling engine was used in WhisperGen small cogeneration units.

literature

  • Richard van Basshuysen , Fred Schäfer (Ed.): Handbook Internal Combustion Engine Basics, Components, Systems, Perspectives. 3rd completely revised and expanded edition. Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn Verlag / GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-528-23933-6 ( ATZ-MTZ reference book ).
  • Stefan Zima, Reinhold Ficht: Unusual engines . 3rd edition, Vogel-Buchverlag, Würzburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8343-3140-3 .

Web links

Commons : Swashplate Motor  - collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ U.S. Patent 821 546
  2. ↑ Photos of Elsbett engines: 3-cylinder in-line engine, 6-cylinder V-engine, 14-cylinder swashplate engine
  3. ↑ animated functional principle of the Strahm motor
  4. ↑ salon-moto-legende.fr
  5. ^ Tilkin
  6. ↑ WhisperGen at the BHKW Infothek (bhkw-infothek.de)