Rotary valve

Rotary valve was first applied to the horn in 1824 by Nathan Adams (1783–1864) of Boston and patented in 1835 by Joseph Riedl.

[5] Rotary valves for industrial manufacturing are often used in bulk material handling, dust collection or pneumatic conveying systems, depending on the application.

A rotary valve in the pharmaceutical, chemical and food industry is used to dose and feed solid bulk products within the processes.

Valves are also commonly used in construction, plastics, recycling, agriculture and forestry, or wherever material needs to be safely and efficiently conveyed from one point to another.

[8] The rotary valve combustion engine possesses several significant advantages over the conventional assemblies, including significantly higher compression ratios and rpm, meaning more power, a much more compact and light-weight cylinder head, and reduced complexity, meaning higher reliability and lower cost.

[9] In the end of 1930s, Frank Aspin developed a design with a rotary valve that rotated on the same axis as the cylinder bore, but with limited success.

They rotate at half engine speed (or one quarter) and lack the inertia forces of reciprocating valve mechanisms.

They filed patents and got an example running in 2006, but were backed by MG Rover which subsequently went bust, leaving Roton without enough funds to continue.

This unit is still in development phase at the time of writing but is significant as it has the potential to run much higher compression ratios than even other rotary valve engines due to a significant but undisclosed new cooling method of the combustion chamber and the ability to eliminate the throttle completely, making it vastly more economical at lower engine speeds, so it is claimed.

A proven completely successful automotive rotary valve engine has been built by the late Ralph Ogden Watson of Auckland New Zealand, during 1989.

[13] [14] Success was achieved as a result of Watson's academic approach to the problem of sealing, his study of previous designs, and his particular combination of knowledge of materials, machining skills, experience with engines, perseverance and realistic expectations.

A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model of the VAZTEC rotary valve can be viewed at this link.

[21] The Suzuki RG500 "Gamma" was powered by a two-stroke, rotary valve, twin crank, square four engine displacing 498 cubic centimeters.