Improving the internal combustion engine, part 1

The internal combustion engine may be a marvel of engineering, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a modern one.

In fact, the basic design pioneered by Jean Lenoir in the 1850s isn’t too far off from the engine that is likely powering your car today. The idea of fuel ignited within a sealed engine block, with the force directed to cylinders and pistons that propel a vehicle, has been improved over the decades but remains largely the same today as it has always been.

And that’s part of the problem. There is only so much that engineers can do to improve the efficiency, performance, and durability of the time-tested internal combustion engine.

That’s why Amir Khajepour, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, ON, Canada, and his team have been working on improving not the combustion chamber itself but the valves that control inputs and exhaust. Their innovation, a fully selectable system that can adjust the opening and closing of intake and exhaust valves, can increase the efficiency of internal combustion engines by more than 10 percent and is the result of more than a decade of work.

Read the full article at ASME.