This engine is better in every way than a conventional engine. It’s more efficient, it makes more power and it even has much better balance.
First, the efficiency. The connecting rod in a conventional engine is at an angle when combustion occurs. Of the four strokes combustion is the one where by far the highest loads are placed on the engine. The fact that the rod is angled during combustion means that the load placed on it is trying to flip the rod. As the rod tries to do this it actually ends up pushing the piston into the cylinder wall. This increases friction and friction is wasted energy which means that efficiency is reduced as less of the energy created by combustion is actually turned into useful work. The other problem is that this increased friction also increases wear. This angle of the rod is the reason why one side of a cylinder wears more than the other over many miles.
Next up, power. How can a different rotating assembly increase power? It can do this by giving the engine more time to harness the energy created by combustion. This of course also positively contributes to efficiency but at high rpm when the window for harnessing combustion energy becomes very small, buying some time leads to higher power output. How does the rotating assembly buy time? By preventing the rod from pulling the piston down.
Now our unconventional engine has a name and it’s called is a scotch yoke engine. A scotch yoke is simply an alternative way of turning rotation into reciprocation and it is not a novel concept at all. It has been employed many times in the past in steam and hot air engines. In the 1920 a gentleman by the name of Ruseel Bourke attempted to improve two stroke engines by empliyng a scotch yoke design and although he built a few working examples, his design was never commercialized.
This brings us to the elephant in the room. If this design has sooo many benefits and is much better than a conventional engine then why do all of our vehicles, land, sea and air, use a conventional engine instead of the allegedly much better scotch yoke design.
But the actual key reason why this engine is not in every vehicle is that this design has an inherent weakness and if you observe it for a bit it quickly becomes obvious where the weakness is…and yes you guessed it. It’s the rod. It’s always the rod. This giant slot that we made in the rod in order to gain all these benefits has done two things. First of all it has made the rod weak and second it has created potential for friction problems. However, material science and engineering as well as machining have made leaps and bounds in the last few decades and may now be in the position to offer solutions to the inherent problems of the scotch yoke engines.
And this brings us to Alfadan. As some of you may know, I made a video about a novel engine design two years ago. The company behind this engine is called Alfadan and according to their patent the engine they want to bring to market is an inline four with a scotch yoke design. The video I made got many views for some reason and I still get a lot of questions in my comments asking about updates. I also get accusations how I promoted a scam etc. So I’d like to use this opportunity to discuss Alfadan a bit and hopefully provide answers to the past and future questions that may come.
A special thank you to my patrons:
Daniel
Pepe
Brian Alvarez
Peter Della Flora
Dave Westwood
Joe C
Zwoa Meda Beda
Toma Marini
Cole Philips
#d4a #scotchyoke
00:00 Scotch Yoke engine benefits
08:43 Alfadan follow-up