SPARLVE and RSE
Stirling Phase Alternating Rotary Liquid Vapor Engine, and Rotary
Stirling Engine
COPYRIGHT (C) 2007 By Vernon Nemitz
Intellectual Property is described here. Modern Copyright laws
give great power to the Copyright holder, regarding the making of
copies of Copyrighted Intellectual Property into ANY medium. In
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notice/explanation is retained. However, if copies are made in
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MAY require a royalty payment to be made, of $10 per copy. In
more detail, a copy of this engine that you make in that medium mostly
by yourself and for yourself can be done for free. If you hire a
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in that medium and sell it, then the $10 royalty should be paid for
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passes, while making/selling millions of copies, inflation can be
expected to trivialize that royalty, by the time the Copyright expires.)
As additional logical support for some of the above statements,
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It is a modern thing to consider a work of engineering to be art
(famous example: the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco), but
documents describing aspects of the art of engineering (or describing
any other art, for that matter, or even one particular work of
engineering art) have been validly copyrightable for many
decades. The present case is a document that describes (partly
with diagrams and other variations of "artwork") the basics of how to
build a gadget, which has a chance of qualifying as being "elegant",
especially if it solves a problem well, that previously had not been
solved well. (Even if it isn't "elegant", and is called "bad
art", that piece of engineering is still qualifying as "art", heh.)
Next, suppose it is built, and the gadget without any documentation is
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Copyright law provides for significant penalties if a Copyright is
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violations. The author recommends that the Copyright on this
particular Intellectual Property not be violated.
Note that even if I am mistaken here about the breadth of modern
Copyright law, even U.S. Patent law grants me a year after publishing
an idea, to Patent it. Certainly nobody else can write a Patent
application for this, partly because I'm declaring here-and-now that to
do so, since it would be a translation of this document into the
language of legalese, will also be a violation of this Copyright!
On to the main thing:
The SPARLVE and RSE are variations on a theme. Like most coined
words, especially an acronym like SPARLVE, it looks ugly until you get
used to it--but let me assure you it's even uglier if you can't
pronounce it! (Thinking up an accurate description that made a
pronounceable acronym took significant effort; the acronym is detailed
in the subtitle of this document.) Anyway, for years I've been
wanting to dream up a purely Rotary version of the Stirling Engine, one
of the most energy-efficient engines ever invented. See
this link. Please take some time to study that link,
especially the engine diagrams, because I'm about to mention a number
of things from that link, in order to show why a SPARLVE (mostly)
qualifies as a Stirling (and an RSE can be exactly that).
To begin: A standard Stirling engine normally exhibits
reciprocating motion of usually-two pistons, and if this can be
replaced with rotary motion it would be even more
energy-efficient. That is, reciprocating mechanical systems
generally waste energy to make motion in one direction stop, and to
start motion again in the other direction, so preventing that wastage
automatically means efficiency goes up.
The two pistons of a standard Stirling engine are connected 90 degrees
"out of phase" with each other. Please note that the word "phase"
has a particular meaning here which is different from another meaning
that was used in the subtitle, and will be explained later on.
Here it refers to part of the 360 degrees of a full/normal
rotation-cycle. Remember that a piston is usually connected to a
"crankshaft", so that its reciprocating motion can be converted into
rotary motion. One point in the cycle of a piston's motion is
usually called "top dead center". At that point, a piston
starting its motion for the first time MIGHT cause either clockwise or
counterclockwise rotation of the crankshaft--most Stirling designs
aren't picky about which way they rotate, and it can be troublesome to
make one always rotate the same way when starting up. (Putting a
flywheel on the crankshaft ensures it keeps rotating in the same
direction, once started.) Heh, it can be troublesome even to get
a Stirling started--many designs are not self-starting. Well, if
one piston starts out at top dead center, and then it moves so that the
crankshaft rotates 90 degrees, and now the second piston is at top dead
center, this means that the second piston is 90 degrees out of phase
with the first.
A SPARLVE and an RSE both feature at least two rotors, and in either
engine the rotor shapes are distinctive enough that it can be easily
seen that one is oriented 90 degrees out of phase with the other.
(There is a variant design described later in which they are 60 degrees
out of phase with each other; would that still qualify as a
Stirling? Possibly so, because some variants of the Stirling
engine have more than two pistons, and when the total is divisible by
three, a 60-degree phase angle is not unlikely.)
In an original/standard Stirling engine, one piston is the power piston
and one piston is called "the displacer". They are often
different sizes to meet their specific purposes. Also, the power
piston is "double-acting" --it is powered in both of the directions in
which it moves. This is the main reason why the engine can work
even though the two pistons are 90 degrees out of phase, instead of
(like in other engine types that have two cylinders) 180 degrees out of
phase. The power piston is pushed while the crankshaft rotates
180 degrees, and "pulled" (explained below) for the other 180 degrees
of a complete crankshaft rotation, and the displacer is simply carried
along for the ride.
The minimum two rotors in a SPARLVE --or the minimum two rotors in an
RSE-- can be identical. This is workable because both rotors can
act like power pistons and both can act like displacers, AND both can
be double-acting. One consequence is that many variants of these
engines should almost always be self-starting, and also almost always
have a preferred direction of rotation.
A standard Stirling engine uses a gas (like air or hydrogen or helium)
as its working fluid. The engine features a place which is always
heated, and another place which is always cooled. (One of the
major inefficiencies of early steam engines was that various parts of
the machinery were alternately heated and cooled; in a Stirling this
happens only to the working fluid; each piece of hardware stays at
mostly the same temperature, which significantly helps its overall
energy-efficiency). When the gas expands its volume in the hot
zone, it pushes on the power piston, and when its volume contracts in
the cool zone, it "pulls" on the power piston. I put that word in
quotes because more accurately, a partial vacuum is created by the
contracting gas, and gas in other parts of the system will act to fill
that vacuum by pushing the power piston toward it. So, while it
may be convenient to think that the piston gets pulled (and I will
continue to use that word in quotes), it actually gets pushed in both
of the directions it moves.
A SPARLVE or RSE also has an always-hot zone and an always-cool
zone. An RSE, a true Rotary Stirling Engine, would use a gas as
its working fluid, while a SPARLVE would use a substance that undergoes
liquid-to-gas or gas-to-liquid "phase changes" (to invoke the other
meaning used here, of the word "phase", regarding a state/type of
existence). A possible problem is that the edge/surfaces of the
rotors are alternately exposed to both the hot and the cold zones, and
so at least the exposed parts of the rotors should be made of, or
coated with, a thermally insulating material, to minimize temperature
changes of the rotors (and to minimize energy wastage).
Each rotor of either a SPARLVE or an RSE is basically a simple disk of
arbitrary thickness, with an axle through its geometric center and four
particular features at the edge of the disk. Two of those
features might be called "lobes", and the other two might be called
"notches". Going around one rotor-disk, and starting at a lobe,
then at 90-degree intervals you will encounter a notch, then another
lobe, then another notch, and then you are back at the first
lobe. The minimum two rotors are mounted in contact with each
other so that either they are round-edge-to-round-edge, or one has a
lobe fitting into a notch of the other, much like meshing gear
teeth. For the moment, let's assume there are two actual gears
behind-the-scenes, having 1:1 ratio, ensuring that the two rotors
maintain their relative orientations accurately (the gears are not
essential, as will be described later). In both a SPARLVE and an
RSE, the notches must be larger than the lobes, and an RSE generally
must have considerably larger notches than a SPARLVE (that's really the
only required difference between the two, besides the choice of working
fluid). I should state here that a variant design mentioned
earlier could have six instead of four "particular features" per
rotor--that's three lobes and three notches, of course (and leads to
one rotor being 60 degrees out of phase with the other).
Obviously it is physically possible for the rotors to have even more
lobes and notches, but the "law of diminishing returns" happens to
apply to implementing that. More about that below.
Now let's focus on a SPARLVE. I've created an animated .GIF to
accompany this description (below). DO NOT ASSUME THAT THE
DIMENSIONS OR DIMENSION-RATIOS IN ANY OF THE IMAGES ASSOCIATED WITH
THIS DOCUMENT ARE THE ONLY THINGS COVERED BY THE COPYRIGHT. Many
obvious variations on the theme are quite possible, besides the things
just mentioned in the previous paragraph, such as smaller rotors with
relatively larger lobes, or larger rotors with relatively smaller
lobes. The composition of the rotors is not specified, but it is
obvious that they need to be made of something that can survive while
doing the work expected of them. The axles in the animation
are portrayed as points; it is obvious they need to be rather more
substantial than that. Even the shapes of the lobes and notches
might be varied. And while the word "HEAT" indicates the hot
zone, it should be obvious from the portrayed effects of gravity (in
the animation), upon the liquid in this particular portrayed
orientation of a SPARLVE, that the place marked "HEAT" isn't the only
spot that should be heated. (So why should the place marked
"COOL" be the only spot that should be cooled, eh?) The word
"zone" has been used here specifically to allow its extent to be
arbitrary/whatever-works. And all of THAT is part of why this
Intellectual Property is broad, not narrow. Got it?
You may wish to copy the .GIF animation and open it with a
well-featured image viewer, especially one which can let you enlarge
the image. You can easily see the 90-degree phase angle in the
relative orientation
of the two rotors, and the hot zone, cool zone, and "displacement zone"
are clearly marked. You can see how gas that expands in the hot
zone can push on lobes of both rotors, and how gas that contracts in
the cool zone can "pull" on lobes of both rotors (making both of them
double-acting, as previously mentioned, for both a SPARLVE and an
RSE). The key fact behind a SPARLVE is that when a substance
"changes phase" from a gas to a liquid or vice-versa, there is
typically a 1000:1 change in the volume of that substance (some can do
better; the steam-to-water ratio is actually 1600:1). The high
relative density of a liquid provides an easy way to transfer
significant amounts of substance from the cool zone of a SPARLVE into
the hot zone, without reciprocating motion (or special plumbing with
one-way valves) being involved.
In order to maximize the percentage of fluid that changes phase in a
SPARLVE, it is necessary to NOT over-heat the fluid. There is a
technical thing known as "the heat of vaporization" which must be added
to convert a liquid, at the boiling point, into a gas. The gas
will automatically exert pressure on its surroundings, and in a SPARLVE
it powers the rotors. If there is strong resistance to its
expansion, then the temperature may need to be raised some to increase
the gas pressure. But we don't want to over-do this, because in
the cool zone of a SPARLVE, we want a significant part of that gas to
condense back into the liquid state. The hotter it is above the
condensation point, the more difficult that will be, to do, because we
have to first cool the gas down to the condensation point and THEN also
remove the "heat of condensation" (identical in magnitude to the heat
of vaporization) for it to become liquid. And this has to be done
rather quickly, if you want to see a fast-rotating SPARLVE.
Fortunately, we likely need only a few milliliters (cubic centimeters)
of liquid in a SPARLVE (the needed quantity is directly related to the
third measurement-dimension, the thickness of the engine, not shown in
the animated .GIF). Most of the "working volume" of the engine,
the space in which boiling/displacing/condensing happens, will be
occupied by gas. Such a small amount of liquid means it can
fairly easily be raised to its boiling point, allowing faster start-up
of the engine, and faster boiling/condensing for faster rotor
motion. This might be improved by selecting a low-boiling-point
liquid that also has (compared to water) a modest heat of
vaporization/condensation (ethyl alcohol, for example). Thus the
total magnitude of heat energy that must be added to boil the liquid in
the hot zone, and removed to condense the liquid in the cool zone, can
be very reasonable. A true Stirling engine is a pure "Carnot
Cycle" engine, which requires large temperature differences between the
hot and cool zones to maximize power production efficiency. Here
is a diagram of an RSE, having three lobes and notches (six "particular
features") per rotor.
Six MAY be better than four, but eight is very likely not better than
six. Odd numbers are not possible unless one rotor has lobes
only, and one rotor has notches only, in which case such an engine may
be a "more accurate translation" of the original Stirling design from
reciprocating to rotary motion, with only one power rotor--a dubious
"advantage", that. The diagrams below show the odd number of ONE
feature per rotor.
But a SPARLVE is a heat engine that does NOT pay much attention to the
Carnot Cycle to get its work done. See this
link to an "Ice Engine", an Idea that was posted specifically to
prepare the mental landscape for the SPARLVE. Both are
phase-change engines, not Carnot Cycle engines.
One thing that a Stirling engine usually has, not previously mentioned
here, is an add-on gadget known as a "regenerator". It's purpose
is to pre-cool the gas moving to the cool zone, absorbing heat energy
in the process, and to use that energy to pre-heat the gas moving to
the hot zone (becoming itself cooler in the process). A
regenerator makes a major contribution to the overall energy efficiency
of a Stirling engine, and therefore this design (both SPARLVE and RSE)
needs to have it, or an equivalent to it. How? In
preparation for that, see this "Casing" diagram:
To help ensure that the hot zone and the cool zone are thermally
isolated, when the casing of the engine is often likely to be made of
metal, it is suggested that the casing be divided into three parts: a
"cool zone assembly", an "axle zone assembly" and a "hot zone
assembly". I'm calling them "assemblies" here simply because that
might be an easier way to make them, than, say, to cast them into the
correct shapes, or to machine them out of large blocks of
material. I do not rule out the notion that somebody might decide
to ignore the thermal isolation issue and construct the casing in a
different way altogether, hoping to get around the Copyright.
Sorry, every casing is going to need certain things in common (ways for
thermal and mechanical energy to get into and/or out of the engine),
and THAT's covered, regardless of details of construction. Of the
two most obvious outer dimensions of the engine, the two diameters of
the side-by-side rotors tends to approximately specify the longest
measurement (call it "length"), while the diameter of one rotor
approximately specifies the next dimension (let's call it "height"
here). If we divide the height into roughly thirds, then each of
the casing assemblies has approximate dimensions of the whole length
and that one-third height. When combined into a complete casing,
thermally insulating gaskets can be used, in fulfillment of the goal of
this paragraph.
The hot-zone and cool-zone assemblies need a way for thermal energy to
be transported from the exterior of the casing to the working volume of
the engine. The assemblies could be solid chunks of material
honeycombed with passageways for appropriate fluids, such as radiator
coolant for the cool zone assembly and hot gases for the hot zone
assembly. Or the casings might constitute a thin shell of
material surrounding the working volume of the engine, with lots of
heat-conducting fins. No matter what variation of these notions
is tried, for a SPARLVE we now need to remember that we need not have a
huge temperature gradient, which makes adding a regenerator fairly
easy. For an RSE the task is less obviously managed, but not
impossible (especially if yet another variation of the design is used;
more on that below).
Now see the Regenerator diagram for a SPARLVE (below). It
portrays a system in which a heat-carrying fluid is passed through the
cool zone of the engine, then through a heater, then through the hot
zone of the engine, then through a radiator, and then back through the
cool zone. For energy-efficiency purposes, this fluid needs to
have as much as possible of a special property known as "heat capacity"
or "specific heat", which is the quantity of heat that must be added or
removed to change its temperature by one degree. To see why we
want to maximize that property, let's imagine some Quantity X of this
fluid NOT passing through the cool zone assembly of the engine, but
just sitting there occupying space. As the vapor inside the
working region reaches the cool zone, some of its heat can be passed to
the exterior fluid. It should be obvious that the higher the heat
capacity of that fluid, the more heat it can absorb before we MUST
replace that warmed fluid with a new batch of cool fluid, if the
overall goal of the engine's cool zone is to be met. In essence,
then, the higher the heat capacity of this exterior fluid, the more
slowly we can pump it through the the other parts already
described--and the more slowly it moves, the less energy is spent in
moving it, and in overcoming friction-equivalent things like
turbulence. From such simplicities do increased
energy-efficiencies result.
The way that exterior fluid acts like a regenerator is somewhat subtle;
it is an "indirect" regenerator that is being described here.
Basically, when the fluid passes through the cool zone and picks up
heat, this means that the fluid does not need to be heated so much,
before it passes through the hot zone and gives off heat.
Likewise, after giving off heat in the hot zone, it need not be cooled
so much in the radiator, before once again passing through the cool
zone. So we have replaced direct effect of a typical Stirling
regenerator with the indirect effect of doing thermal regeneration in
an intermediary fluid, between the actual heating and cooling parts of
the engine. The main reason this was chosen has to do with the
very small region in the center of the engine, where condensed liquid
passes from the cool zone to the hot zone. It's just too small a
region, and liquid passes through it too quickly, for any significant
direct-regeneration effect to be possible there.
There is one drawback to the preceding. When first heating up the
engine, rather more than a few milliliters of fluids must be warmed,
since the intermediary regenerator fluid is now involved, too. It
will take longer for the engine to start producing significant power.
In an RSE the situation is somewhat different, because the notches are
much bigger than in a SPARLVE. Please review the earlier diagrams
showing three
lobes and notches per rotor. That group of sketches shows the
variant design where one rotor is 60 degrees out of phase with the
other. But it is an RSE, a Rotary Stirling Engine, where only gas
is the intended working fluid. The rationale for the large
notches derives directly from some of the basic facts about all Carnot
Cycle engines.
First, the temperature scale that is used for the Carnot Cycle must be
an "Absolute" scale, where Zero degrees is "Absolute Zero", the lowest
theoretically possible temperature (that's about -273 degrees on the
Celsius scale). When the properties of most gases are studied
using an Absolute temperature scale, it normally is observed that if
the temperature is doubled, then the volume of the gas doubles, too, if
nothing interferes. If the gas is confined so that it cannot
expand, then its pressure will double instead. In a Stirling
engine, the gas is partly confined, so that it must exert pressure on
the power piston in order to expand.
The relevant question is, "How much is the gas volume allowed to
change, in a Stirling engine?" The answer to that question tells
us much about what the temperature-difference should be, between the
hot zone and the cool zone of the engine. If the engine allows a
3:1 volume change, then it logically figures that the hot zone should
be three times the Absolute temperature of the cool zone. So if
we expect the cool zone to be room temperature, which is roughly 300
degrees on the Kelvin absolute-temperature scale, then the hot zone
needs to be 900 degrees Kelvin, to make the gas expand its volume
three-fold. A slightly hotter temperature may be useful in
getting more power out of the engine (via increased gas pressure), but
a much hotter temperature is likely to actually simply be wasted
energy, because the engine can't properly use the greater changes in
volume that would be associated with the higher temperature.
In an RSE the cooled gas gets pushed into a notch of one rotor.
Even with large notches, compared to a SPARLVE, the space available is
not especially great, compared to the space that the lobes of the
rotors can traverse while being "pulled" by gas contracting in the cool
zone, and in turn pushing that gas into the notch. A gas-volume
change of 5:1 might be expected, perhaps. If so, this means that
the hot zone should have five times the Absolute temperature of the
cool zone, for an RSE to be maximally energy-efficient. That
could be 1500 degrees Kelvin, which is quite hot, to be sure
(approximately 2250 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale).
But, how quickly can we quintuple the Absolute temperature of a gas,
and cool it down again? This is crucial, if we want an RSE to
have a decently fast rotation rate. If we can't do it, then we
need a smaller gas volume ratio in the engine--fairly easily done by
using a different lobe size, relative to the rotor diameter and notch
size. On the
other hand, maximum efficiency of a Carnot Cycle engine depends on
maximizing the temperature difference it employs! This trade-off
between what is desired and what is possible is why a number of
research engines would probably have to be built, to find the best
compromise that we can engineer. (Now remember that in a SPARLVE,
the typical 1000:1 ratio between gas and liquid phases allows smaller
notches, a not-extreme temperature difference, and a possibly easier
heat-transfer situation. That's why the author of this document
tends to prefer the SPARLVE design.) Fortunately for any
corporation not wanting to be annoyed with royalty payments while
conducting such research, a corporation is legally a person, and making
research-engine translations of this document can fall under the "free
if
built by self for self" clause of the Copyright notice.
Anyway, a regenerator can come in handy for an RSE, indeed! So
please now see the "RSE-regenerator-1" diagram below. Again a
high-heat-capacity fluid is used, but this time its function is purely
as a regenerator, and there are four fluid-travel loops (for any
version of an RSE where each rotor has both lobes and notches; if the
engine rotors are lobes-only and notches only, then only two
fluid-travel loops are needed). The regerator fluid absorbs heat
from the "displace" zone of the engine, as gas is rotated from the hot
zone to the cool zone. Note that in the animated SPARLVE
portrayal, it can be problematic to define where the hot zone ends and
the displace zone begins. We obviously don't want a regenerator
removing heat from the working gas before it has finished expanding and
pushing on the rotor lobes! And that's (A) partly
why the regenerator for a SPARLVE was chosen to be an indirect thing,
and (B) why the version of the RSE that has triplets of lobes and
notches on each rotor was portrayed in the "RSE-60" sketch: It
possibly allows the different zones to be better-defined.
Nevertheless, that sketch also clearly reveals that there is still a
significant problem with respect to trying to transport significant
quantities of heat when space (gas volume of notch) and time (inversely
proportional to rotation rate) are limited. (There may even be a
slightly better layout for directions of fluid flow than presented in
the diagram; feel free to experiment!) Certainly the first
problem is why it was mentioned in the sketch that yet another
variation of the RSE design is likely needed, to take full advantage of
a regenerator.
You may recall that near the start of all these descriptions it was
mentioned that the engine would feature at least two rotors. Here
is an unfinished sketch showing an initial exploration of a 3-rotor
design:
It was also previously mentioned that I've been thinking about Rotary
Stirling Engines for a long time, and the above sketch relates somewhat
to the prior descriptions in this document, and to
an early effort, posted
at this link a few years ago, as well as to this new design:
Many variations on the generic theme of the SPARLVE and RSE, as
presented here, are possible. It is in the author's best interest
to mention at least one example of such variation, so how about an
engine in which the rotors are not all the same size, or an engine with
four axles/shafts for the rotors? Here's both at the same time:
And now we are done with Regenerator stuff. The only remaining
thing to discuss is a comment made early-on about pretending that 1:1
gearing is located behind-the-scenes, to ensure that the rotors stay
properly/relatively aligned--and that the gears aren't really
necessary. The simple explanation begins by asking you to go back
and look again at the animated .GIF. It was constructed from 18
separate images, at 10-degree intervals of rotation. Suppose we
had 18 rotors on each axle of the engine, and also on each axle
neighboring rotors exhibit 10-degree phase angles. It should be
obvious that in the overall assembled engine, no matter what its
position in the total 360 degrees of one full rotation cycle, there
will always be some of the rotors having lobes in notches, effectively
acting as gear teeth. (18 rotors per axle is probably excessive,
in fact.) Therefore no ordinary gears are needed.
Be careful when installing all those rotors in the same overall engine
case, however! Some ways of doing it will lead to engines that
cannot work! That will be because a pathway will exist for the
working fluid to flow without exerting pressure on any of the rotor
lobes! Either the rotors (or groups of rotors) on each axle must
be isolated, in terms
of fluid flow, or an installation pattern that resembles a "herringbone
gear" will need to be used. Those statements are best explained
with an accompanying sketch or three.
The next sketch is at this
external link; scroll down to the gears; both helical and
herringbone gears are portrayed. But since gears have far more
lobes and notches than are practical for this Intellectual Property,
I've taken the liberty of severely distorting and modifying the
herringbone-gear sketch, to try to show what the surface of a SPARLVE
or RSE rotor might look like, with a lobe and a notch separated by
nearly 90 degrees (okay, I admit my sketch isn't quite up to the
intended result; they're more like 60 degrees apart. So?):
In conclusion, if you imagine this rotor meshing with another,
contacting where that central horizontal line would cross the front of
the portrayed rotor, then one lobe is meshing at the center, and
another lobe is either just-beginning or just-ending its meshing at the
edges (depending on rotation direction). Therefore they can mesh
well enough, for an entire rotation, to eliminate synchronizing gears
(and their associated cost and energy losses).
----------------------
Addenda added Nov 6, 2007.
----------------------
Addenda regarding prior art:
1. Patent FR2662468
http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=FR2662468&F=0
a modular rotary heat engine
Reply: The patent appears to be just a variation of a gear pump
(different-shaped gears). It doesn't have the 3 rotors of the
"Yet Another Heat Engine", which are important to its operation, and it
doesn't have the larger-than-lobe-size deep notches, that either a
SPARLVE or an RSE would have. I know of an
internal-combustion-engine design that resembles a SPARLVE more than
that one does (link added), but even it doesn't have its rotors all
acting as power rotors.
2. Tri-Dyne http://www.deadbeatdad.org/eliptoid/tridyne.html
A purely rotary internal combustion engine, once featured in great
detail in the magazine "Popular Science" (July 1969 if I recall right).
Reply: Neither SPARLVE nor RSE are internal-combustion engines; they
are external-combustion engines.
3. DE19711084
http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=DE19711084&F=0&QPN=DE19711084
another rotary heat engine
Reply: That is a closer match. But that inventor went to a lot of
trouble to pipe the working fluid through the rotor axles, so that it
generates an action/reation/jet effect as it leaves the rotor lobes and
enters the working volume of the engine. Most of the parts have
complicated shapes, so manufacturing that engine on a large scale would
be significantly more expensive than making the engines I have
described in the SPARLVE and RSE document, where expanding gas merely
pushes on the rotor lobes.
Addenda regarding SPARLVE and/or RSE:
1. Regarding seals, they have their uses, but are not necessarily
essential. The "Tri-Dyne" engine had NO seals. It could
easily run at 12,000 RPM and it produced 4HP per cubic inch of
displacement (I take that to mean it guzzled fuel, going that
fast). The trick it used was very-close-tolerances on the
machining. 0.004 inch gaps, at most, between the rotor and the
side wall, and the rotor lobes and the outer casing. I guess the
explanation is, it ran too fast for there to be time for much gaseous
material to leak through those cracks. This implies, of course,
that a slower-running engine might indeed need seals. Or even
closer toleranaces in construction. I saw an ad the other day,
somebody was looking for someone who could machine stuff within 0.0004
inches, a tenth the gap-size in the "Tri-Dyne".
The Wankel semi-rotary engine (in production for Mazda RX-7 cars) has
seals on the sides of the rotor, as well as on the edges of the rotor
lobes. Making seals that could stand up to internal-combustion
temperatures and pressures took a LONG time, but it is a developed
technology. And these engines don't need that extreme of
temperature or pressure, anyway.
Let the use of seals be optional, based on the practicalities of making
copies of a SPARLVE or RSE.
2. One alternative to 1:1 gears, that might be worth
experimenting with, though, starts with the thin insulating layer on
the rotor surface: if it is a high-friction substance like silicone,
then the two rotors might simply be in contact, and friction will keep
them aligned as they rotate. Can't say how long it will last,
though "rolling resistance" is what's involved here, often a low
wear-and-tear factor.
3. Feel free to build several, if you wish. I'm only
interested in a royalty if you sell those copies.
Addenda regarding recent enhancements to copyright law:
1. The author's permission can be required to translate a
copyrighted work. How does a physical copy not count as a
translation?
2. Consider a Review of an already-existing device (for an
example, there is the Popular Science article mentioned at the
"Tri-Dyne" link). Often this is a thorough description of the
device, including its drawbacks, and that document, including
diagrams/images, is entirely normally Copyrightable written
material. Here the Review simply precedes the actual existence of
the device. Why should that make a difference? Indeed, the
"imagination" factor here (crucial to all works of art) is far higher
than in an ordinary Review!
3.Consider a translation of this page into sign language. What is
sign language? It is a language made from SHAPES. So is Braille,
also. Well, if Copyright law can govern the translation of a
document into the shapes of Braille, such that a specific Exception to
Copyright Law had to be made to allow routine translations into
Braille, why can't it govern the translation of a document into the
shapes described in the document, one aspect of the language of
engineers (which as previously mentioned are reverse-translatable into
another document)?
4. My starting point is that Copyright Law has been changed in
recent years and made more powerful thereby. The full extent of
that power hasn't been tested in court yet, so far as I know. I
respect case law, but since Copyright Law has been modified, to cover
more media in which a copy might be made, has that been tested yet? A
judge could render a Decision regarding whether or not recent changes
to Copyright Law have accidently made them workable alternatives to
Patents, and I'm sure precedent could play a large role in that
decision, but part of my argument here is that recent extensions to
Copyright law are in certain respects UNprecedented. And judges
usually render decisions after hearing "arguments". I have such
arguments.
4A: For example, let's start from way out in left field, and examine
the word "sexy". The dictionary provides such definitions as
"risque`", or "exuding sexual attraction", but the word is often used
in a manner such that its meaning could be "encourages one to think
about the sex act". By that definition, then, the sex act itself
must be the very essence of "sexy".
Well, the logical corollary to that is, a gadget constructed from a
text/diagrams description is itself the essence of its description;
i.e., it is just as much a COPY of the description that was used to
construct it, as it is an actual gadget. I have called it a
"translation", and that is still an accurate call, because the
"language" of that description, the essence of the actual gadget, is
different from the original text/diagrams. Still, the gadget
remains the essence of its description AND UNORIGINAL: a copy, that
is. Since Copyright law covers the making of copies, quite
clearly...\
4B: The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, while famous for such things
as illegalizing efforts to break copy-protection, also had to extend
the range of media into which copies can be made. A digital copy
(a sequence of 1s and 0s) bears no physical resemblance at all to the
original, yet it is considered to be equivalent to the original.
Note that because of such things as encryption and data compression,
there could actually be a very very large number of sequences of 1s and
0s, all of which are equivalent to the original. Then there is
the physical form in which those 1s and 0s are stored, from the ancient
history of Jacquard Loom through magnetic rings of early-computer
"core" memory, to holography and DNA --and who knows what the future
holds? So I interpret all that as basically saying that, "If you can
retrieve some semblance of the original copyrighted thing from the
copy, then that suffices to define the copy." The corollary is that the
medium doesn't matter, and thus gadgets can qualify as copies of their
descriptions. They even qualify as "digital" if you think of
"atom-here=1" and "no-atom-here=0". See this link regarding
3-dimensional printing --and note that it is generically CALLED
"printing", just as if an old-fashioned type of copy of something was
being made:
http://fabathome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
So, since atoms can indeed be digital data-representation/storage, per
the DMCA, and since the construction of something from detailed written
information can now be generically called "printing", and since in the
near future any sort of physical thing will be constructable in that
manner, and since manufactured objects will most certainly be be
categorizable as "copies", not original works, what is the judge's most
logical Decision regarding recent Copyright Law and the making of
physical-object/copies from detailed written information?