A Numerical Study of a Compressed Air Engine with Rotating Cylinders

Abstract

This article explores the possibility that, during the elimination of conventional combustion engines, the connecting rod becomes deflected. A larger connecting rod angle creates higher lateral pressure on the piston, also leading to greater loads on other engine components. This fact inspired us to develop an applied mechanism design that reduces the disadvantages of conventional combustion engines. The presented mathematical model that describes the designed engine working principle was created utilizing Lagrange’s equations of motion of the second kind and solved in MATLAB. This paper also includes a multibody simulation model of the engine mechanism created using the Simpack software. Based on a comparison of the two methods, the obtained waveforms of the selected kinematic quantities were found to yield minimal deviations. A real prototype was subsequently developed based on the mathematical model outputs. In this manner, we practically verified that the proposed theoretical solution for a non-conventional engine is fully functional.

Keywords

• compressed air engine
• rotating cylinders
• non-conventional engine
• numerical simulation
• analysis and design