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Brighton Multi-Cylinder Camless Engine
Contact: Dr Steve Begg
3 Cylinder Gasoline Camless Engine
The Brighton Multi-Cylinder Camless Engine is a Ricardo-developped in-line 3 cylinder camless GDI research engine. The four independently controlled hydraulically actuated valves per cylinder allow for research into advanced engine cycles and combustion modes.
This engine was originally commissioned at the Brighton SHRL for the 2/4 SIGHT project. It produced the first ever controlled operating mode switches from 4 stroke to 2 stroke (and back) and demonstrated outstanding 2 stroke performance of 150 Nm/l at 1000 rpm and 230 Nm/l at 2500 rpm thanks to its innovative combustion chamber. The concept of the 2/4 cycle engine (illustrated in Fig. 1 below) relies on using the traditional cylinder poppet valves found commonly in 4 stroke engines to be used in 2 stroke mode also by switching to a different valve opening frequency. Unique valve, fuel and air handling control strategies ensure a smooth mode switch and good scavenging in 2 stroke operation. A demonstration of mode switching can be seen in the video in Fig. 2.
Fig 1: Principle of operation in 2 strokes mode
