Revolving cylinder engine

The primary claimed benefit of the revolving cylinder, axial piston engine is that a 4-cycle, reciprocating piston engine can be achieved without the need for a complex and expensive valve train. The intake and exhaust flows are controlled by simple ports in the cylinder heads. Costs are further reduced because all cylinders at each end of the engine share a common fuel injector and/or spark plug. Additionally, the designs are typically compact and lightweight.

Most revolving cylinder, axial piston engine designs utilize a fixed, multi-lobed barrel type cam and rollers on the pistons to control the reciprocating movement of the pistons. The benefit of this approach, versus a conventional crankshaft-and-connecting-rod mechanism, is that the kinematics of the piston motion can be optimized with regards to combustion cycle efficiency.

The primary drawback to the revolving cylinder, axial piston engine design is that rotating piston assemblies are subjected to centrifugal forces, which can result in significant friction losses. These centrifugal forces increase at the square of the angular velocity. So unless the engine is run at very low rotational speeds, the friction losses due to centrifugal forces acting on the piston assemblies can quickly become unacceptable.

To date, no revolving cylinder, axial piston engine has achieved any measure of commercial acceptance.

The US patent classification 123/56.8 describes several examples. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

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