Think you know engines? Think again! We're diving into the wildest, weirdest, and most ambitious internal combustion engines ever designed—some straight out of sci-fi. See what worked, what flopped, and what could change the world. Join us for a ride through engineering history! Subscribe for more mind-blowing tech, and tell us in the comments which engine blew your mind the most! #technology #engineering #cars #innovation #science
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@kramola_online
0:00 - Introduction to Engine Innovations
0:59 - Split-Cycle Engine Designs
2:26 - PathMotor and Bonner Engine Projects
3:47 - Axial and Redmax Engine Innovations
5:43 - Toroidal Engines and Their Challenges
7:02 - Nutation and Rotary Engine Developments
8:32 - Modern Rotary, Liquid Piston, and Omega-One
10:51 - Oscillating Pistons, Gas Turbines, and Conclusions
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@kramola_online
0:00 - Introduction to Engine Innovations
0:59 - Split-Cycle Engine Designs
2:26 - PathMotor and Bonner Engine Projects
3:47 - Axial and Redmax Engine Innovations
5:43 - Toroidal Engines and Their Challenges
7:02 - Nutation and Rotary Engine Developments
8:32 - Modern Rotary, Liquid Piston, and Omega-One
10:51 - Oscillating Pistons, Gas Turbines, and Conclusions
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MotorTranscript
00:00Most people likely know how a typical internal combustion engine works.
00:05Many companies developing new engine modifications often promise great success,
00:11claiming their internal combustion engines will revolutionize the industry.
00:16But when it comes to industrial production, engineers always turn to the good old classic piston design.
00:23Whenever big money is involved, multinational corporations prefer not to take risks.
00:30That's why it seems that the most unusual internal combustion engines have long been consigned to the dustbin of history.
00:36And no one will ever return to them. Or will they?
00:40Today, we'll show you engines like these, these, and even these.
00:45And everything you'll see by the end of this episode will fill in the blanks in the history of alternative
00:49internal combustion engines
00:51and reveal just how quirky and fascinating engineering thought can sometimes be.
00:57So, let's get started.
00:59The first engine in our review is from the American company Scattery Group,
01:03which has the classic cycles of intake, compression, power, and exhaust.
01:07But they don't occur in the same cylinder. They happen in different ones.
01:11The cold cylinder manages intake and compression, while the hot cylinder handles the power stroke and exhaust.
01:18As gases expand in the working cylinder, the cold compressor cylinder is in the intake stroke.
01:25During the working cylinder's exhaust stroke, the cold cylinder is finishing compression.
01:29The pistons approach their top dead centers.
01:32The mixture is transferred from the cold cylinder to the hot one through the transfer port.
01:36And it is ignited.
01:38This separate cycle is basically the same auto cycle, although modified.
01:42The Americans came up with it in 2006, and in 2009, they built a prototype of the Scattery Split cycle
01:49engine.
01:50Compressor and working cylinders may have different diameters and piston strokes, allowing flexible parameter adjustment.
01:58It's similar to the Miller cycle, but with extra gas expansion.
02:01If you add a branch with valves and a high-pressure tank to the channel between the cylinders,
02:07you can make such an engine collect energy during braking and use it during acceleration.
02:13However, for several years now, the activities of the Scattery Group company have been limited to prototypes and participation in
02:20exhibitions.
02:21It seems that the real fuel efficiency here still can't outweigh the high complexity of the design.
02:26Former developers from the Croatian company PathMotor turned to the split-cycle working process.
02:32Their separated design attracted attention with a lower number of parts, reduced friction, and less noise.
02:38And the need for an external tank for the lubrication system, since oil in the crankcase was not provided, did
02:44not scare them off.
02:45The inventors built several prototypes with a working volume of 7 liters,
02:50and their size and weight turned out to be almost half that of traditional internal combustion engines.
02:55But the output was never determined.
02:57The last prototype was assembled in 2011, and then the project stalled.
03:03The two-stroke Bonner engine, invented in 2006 in the United States by Walter Schmid, is even more complex, just
03:11like in the PathMotor project.
03:12The cylinders are arranged in an X shape, and the crankshaft moves planetarily via a gear system.
03:19In the Bonner engine, the valves at the bottom of the cylinders and the rotating slide valves in the engine
03:24housing are responsible for gas distribution.
03:27At the same time, the outer pistons can shift slightly under oil pressure, providing a variable compression ratio.
03:34It's a complicated design, all for the sake of high power-to-weight ratio.
03:38In theory, the Bonner engine looks interesting, but in practice, there hasn't been any news about it for a long
03:44time.
03:45It didn't meet expectations.
03:47Other inventors kept the internal combustion engine's operating cycles the same, focusing instead on how its parts were arranged.
03:54For example, axial engines are over a hundred years old.
03:58An early patent is shown above.
04:00They vary in details, but share a core principle.
04:03Cylinders are arranged like cartridges in a revolver drum, with a coaxial output shaft.
04:09The conversion of the piston's reciprocating motion into the rotation of the shaft is handled by various systems,
04:15such as pins inclined to the engine's longitudinal axis, swash plates, and so on.
04:21Duke Engines in New Zealand developed a five-cylinder, four-stroke, three-liter axial engine.
04:28According to its creators, it is 19% lighter and 36% more compact than a traditional internal combustion engine
04:37of the same size.
04:39It was promised for many fields, but dreams of global conquest stayed just dreams.
04:45A more complex axial example is the Red Max engine from Canadian company Rig Technologies.
04:51Here, instead of cylinders, a dozen compartments are organized in a common drum using thin blades.
04:57Plates are installed in the slots of the rotor, which slide along them as it rotates at the ends.
05:03The resulting variable volumes are limited by curved surfaces.
05:07They determine the trajectory of the blade movement and control the gas exchange.
05:12The Red Max design allows for engines to be built for different types of fuel, although the inventors initially chose
05:19diesel.
05:19In 2003, a prototype with a diameter and length of only 152 mm was built.
05:25It generated 42 horsepower, several times more than a similar-sized internal combustion engine.
05:31Later, the company reported the creation of larger prototypes with 127 and 380 horsepower, but judging by the press releases,
05:40all its activities still remain experimental.
05:42Another example of theory-surpassing practice is the toroidal motor round engine, or Variable Geometry Turbocharger engine, developed by the
05:51now-defunct Canadian company Variable Geometry Turbocharger Technologies.
05:56Engineers tested the first prototypes of the Variable Geometry Taurus engine back in 2005.
06:01The torus here acts as a cylinder, inside which rotates a billet created from a dense set of small parts,
06:20hunting around summer houses.
06:22This certificate is valid, hence a radical reduction in vibrations on good calculated efficiency.
06:36In 2009, Americans Harry Kelly and Rick Ivis developed their own toroidal engine, which fundamentally repeated the Canadian design.
06:44According to their estimates, a torus with a half-meter diameter would provide 230 horsepower at just 1,050 revolutions
06:53per minute.
06:53But now, the website of their company, Garrick Engines, just has a placeholder.
06:58Thank you for your interest.
07:00The page may be updated in the future.
07:02Perhaps a slightly better fate awaits the so-called nutation engine, invented by the American Leonard Meyer in 2006.
07:10At least a few prototypes of it were actually built.
07:13Nutation in Latin means to nod.
07:16Meyer formed four variable-volume working chambers between the engine housing and a disc that nods from side to side,
07:23which acts as a piston.
07:24The disc is halved along its diameter and mounted on a Z-shaped shaft, which provides the power output.
07:31Gas exchange is handled by channels and valves in the nutational housing.
07:35Prototypes of Meyer's engine were built by Baker Engineering and its affiliate, Kinetic BEI.
07:41With one 102 mm disc, the unit generates 7 horsepower.
07:45With two 203 mm discs, it reaches 120 horsepower.
07:50It provides 2.5 to 3 horsepower per kilogram versus 1 to 2 in mass-produced naturally aspirated Namassavi engines.
07:59Some Ferrari engines produce more than 3 horsepower per kilogram, but at extremely high 9,000 revolutions per minute.
08:07The specific power per liter, however, is not impressive.
08:10Currently, Baker and Kinetic seem to be refining their projects, although there isn't much activity on their websites either.
08:17In 2010, the nutation engine caught the interest of the United States Air Force Research Center.
08:23Harry Smith, the laboratory manager, demonstrates the inner workings of the engine
08:28and explains that the design is especially valuable for light aviation.
08:32The idea of rotary units of various types so often attracts innovators, as if simply departing from the familiar design.
08:42Nikolai, a schoolboy originally from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, who moved to the United States long ago, is
08:48with his son Alexander.
08:50He developed an engine reminiscent of the Wankle engine, turned inside out.
08:54The peanut-shaped rotor also rotates in a triangular chamber, but unlike the Wankle unit, the seals are fixed not
09:01on the piston, but on the chamber walls.
09:03To advance the design, the schoolboys founded Liquid Piston, attracting Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's interest.
09:11Now they are funding experiments, hoping for the potential of peanut-shaped units to be used in light aircraft, including
09:18drones and in portable generators.
09:21The prototype engine, with a displacement of 23 cubic centimeters, has a decent efficiency of 20% for its size.
09:29Now the authors are aiming for a diesel prototype, weighing about 13 kilograms, and producing 40 horsepower to be installed
09:37in a hybrid car.
09:38Their calculations show its efficiency should rise to 45%.
09:42And this is a revolutionary internal combustion engine from Estron Aerospace.
09:49They've called it Omega-1.
09:51Company representatives claim that they already have a working prototype of the engine,
09:55and that they will provide more detailed information in the near future.
09:59For now, the company has stated that, like the Wankle rotary engine, the Omega-1 does not have an offset
10:06crankshaft mechanism,
10:07a shaft, or pistons, that move in a reciprocating motion.
10:12However, unlike Wankle engines, the Omega-1 has a pre-chamber that separates the cold intake air from the exhaust
10:19gases,
10:20eliminating the problem of valve overlap.
10:22All this makes the Omega-1 the world's first engine with active linear power transmission,
10:29where all power is delivered through a single rotating shaft.
10:33The standard Omega-1 engine weighs only 16 kilograms and produces 160 horsepower with a torque of 230 newton meters.
10:43At the same time, the design easily allows for multiple engines to be installed one after another,
10:49gradually increasing the power.
10:50The last engine showed that while a flat unit design is appealing since a rotor can be very narrow,
10:58rotors aren't strictly required for this approach.
11:01Simply square the traditional piston and make the cylinder rectangular from above.
11:07This unique pivotal engineering project has existed for years,
11:11with several prototypes built to power motorcycles and airplanes.
11:15The development is an engine with oscillating rectangular pistons.
11:19One edge is fixed to a stationary axis, and the other is connected to a connecting rod.
11:25The creators call it the so-called oscillating piston.
11:28It is primarily intended for aviation.
11:31In addition to high output characteristics relative to its weight and size,
11:35this two-stroke unit is excellent for boosting performance,
11:39thanks to a liquid cooling channel that passes through the piston.
11:44With a different design, this trick is difficult, but this is a gas turbine engine.
11:50Unlike many of the examples we've looked at,
11:53vehicles with gas turbine engines have existed since the early 1950s.
11:58Passenger car manufacturers decided to play this game, and continued until the late 1960s.
12:04The era of gas turbines was short-lived, but it gave us a whole array of extraordinary models.
12:10Rover, Jetton, Fiat Turbina, Ford Thunderbird, Chrysler, TurboFlight.
12:16A gas turbine is a simpler and much more powerful engine compared to a classic internal combustion engine.
12:22It's no surprise that the automotive industry, which up until the 1950s actively borrowed a number of technical solutions from
12:30the aviation sector,
12:31didn't stay on the sidelines.
12:33They decided to try using these engines in passenger cars, since gas turbine engines aren't complex in design.
12:41Shafts with compressor turbine wheels, the first supplying compressed air to the combustion chamber with fuel.
12:47When the working mixture burns and expands, it spins the turbine wheel, which uses the energy to rotate the compressor,
12:54and, of course, to move using the jet stream.
12:57This is a rotary piston engine.
13:00Walter Freud and Felix Wankle were the first engineers to present this design not so long ago, in 1957.
13:08The unique feature of this power unit is the piston rotor, which is driven by the force of gas pressure.
13:14For every full rotation of the shaft, the rotor manages to turn 120 degrees.
13:20Each of the three isolated chambers replicates the full four-stroke cycle of an internal combustion engine,
13:26injection, compression, power stroke, and exhaust.
13:30The obvious advantages of this type of engine are considered to be their compactness,
13:35lightweight, fewer parts, among which there are no pistons, connecting rods, or crankshaft,
13:40a simplified lubrication system, low vibration levels, and high specific power output.
13:46But there are also major drawbacks.
13:48Poor ceiling efficiency, the gap between the rotor and the cylinder walls,
13:53high consumption of special oil, a tendency to overheat, demanding spark plugs,
13:58and high power output only at relatively high RPMs.
14:02True popularity for rotary piston engines was, of course, brought by the Japanese company Mazda,
14:08which became famous not only for its legendary RX models.
14:13Le Mans prototype, 757.
14:16At different times, several manufacturers tried rotary piston engines.
14:21Even AVTOVAZ made rotary-powered 5s and 7s in the 1980s,
14:26used by traffic police and law enforcement agencies.
14:29Even such a small step away from classic internal combustion engines
14:32showed how many ideas never make it to mass production.
14:36Maybe it's not a manufacturer conspiracy,
14:38but just that traditional internal combustion engines are evolving too.
14:42The latest Miller cycle gasoline engines have a thermal efficiency of up to 40%,
14:47even without turbocharging.
14:50That's a lot.
14:51Most gasoline engines have 20-30% diesels, have 30-40%,
14:55and on large ships, it can reach up to 50%.
14:59Currently, a global alternative to internal combustion engines is believed to have been found.
15:04These are electric motors and power units using fuel cells or for electric vehicles.
15:10This is a dead-end path.
15:11And they also burn fuel, just earlier at power plants that generate electricity.
15:16Write what you think about all this, and see you in future episodes on our channel.
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