Austarion

over the past couple of decades, we've seen much advancement in internal combustion engine technology.. carburetors have given way to efi.. we had the pushrod engines, and the smarter people moved to ohc and then to dohc, and now mechanical variable valve timing..

i was thinking.. the next big step in automotive engine design would be complete removal of the camshafts and replacement with electronically actuated valves.. maybe something like valves opened by solenoids getting a signal from a hall effect sensor or something similar on the crank? or just a crank angle sensor i suppose?

this would effectively reduce the size and weight of the valvetrain, increase the number of mechanics that suffer headaches, and, with more research, it would eventually give rise to the replacement of mechanical vvt with infinately variable electronic valve timing.. i shall call it ivvt :D

I'm not a mechanical engineer or anything.. but this is what i would think the next big step would be.. what do you guys think? potential issues? I believe it's not a new idea.. anyone know why it hasn't been implemented yet? or anyone know of any vehicles that already use it?

Formula 1 cars do/did use this technique, Using actuators to open and close the valves. There is also a article about it on Autospeed.com

Not a new idea.
Whats holding it back is longetivity of the actuators and cost.

yep thats true i think BMW was playing around with it also for road cars but as u said the actuators cost and durability

The next big thing could have been rotary valves had fia not banned it. Mrb1 posted this about a year ago.
http://home.people.net.au/~mrbdesign/PD ... echBRV.pdf

believe it or not there was a rotary valve head made for the holden grey motor in the late 50's (dunstan)

redzone wrote:believe it or not there was a rotary valve head made for the holden grey motor in the late 50's (dunstan)

That was waaaay b 4 u were born Dave but I can remember seeing it in action when they used to have speedboat races on the Milton to Toowong reach of the Brisbane river .T he motor was in a hydroplane named Hepcat & it always had a battle with a monohull powered with a Jaguar engine if my memory serves me correctly :
The Yanks have a rotary valve head but I can;t remember the name must be loosing my short time memory LOL

it's a shame that rotary valves were banned by the FIA.. seem like a really great idea.. did the FIA give an 'official' reason for the ban?

regardless, such an idea should have been researched and developed for road use anyway.. why wasn't it? anyone know?

i remember an article on "towards 2000" about a rotary valve engine when i was about 10 years old (1987), so someone was giving it a shot back then...

i'm a little cranky today but ...

/start conspiracy theory

FIA couldn't allow established motor building firms to have to keep up withand compete with new technology.. that'd be like expecting ford and holden to do more to compete against the nissan skyline. much easier to ban it and keep the "good ol' boys" happy..

/end conspiracy theory

Reason Fia banned it was those who were in a position to influence FIA didnt have the technology.

Rotary valves have been around for a long time, since the early 1900's, theres a website with abit of history on them http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/P ... IC.htm#now.

Had it not been banned and it was sucessful then there would have always been a chance that later on the technology will filter down to the general plublic. The difference between someone like holden doing it and f1 doing it is budgets and less emphasis on returns on investments.

Rice Thief wrote:

Reason Fia banned it was those who were in a position to influence FIA didnt have the technology.

Spot on and according to MRB it was Renault that lobbied the hardest.

Oldie wrote:

I can remember seeing it in action when they used to have speedboat races on the Milton to Toowong reach of the Brisbane river .T he motor was in a hydroplane named Hepcat & it always had a battle with a monohull powered with a Jaguar engine if my memory serves me correctly

LOL - Rad, seeing as we are "remembering", what was it like watching Stonehenge being built :D