Many brands have tried to go all out with electrification and have ended up backing down. There have also been other manufacturers that have continued to bet on combustion and seek to extend its life as much as possible. Porsche is one of themas their approach could not be limited entirely to plug-in technology. In fact, they have continued to develop very striking projects in parallel. Now a new one has come to light six-stroke engine that they have patented and that could achieve very encouraging figures in terms of efficiency for the times to come.
As recently discovered AutoGuidethe Stuttgart firm filed a patent application (18/585.308) in February with the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) that had certain peculiarities. This work done in conjunction with the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania speaks of a six-stroke engine, which is described as a “two times three”. This mechanism has a single crankshaft that moves inside a ring, resulting in a circular motion in which There are no dead spotsIn other conventional engines, when the crankshaft rotates, two upper and two lower dead centers are generated during the cycle.
To give you an idea, this engine completes a full cycle when the crankshaft rotates 1,080º, which would be equivalent to three complete turns. It would be like having two three-stroke processesleaving the phases in the following order:
- Admission
- Compression
- Explosion/Expansion
- Compression
- Explosion/Expansion
- Exhaust
In this operation, the piston reaches top dead center between the second and third stroke, and again during the fourth and fifth. The bottom dead center would arrive between the sixth and the first stroke. On the other hand, the top bottom dead center is between the first and second stroke, and then between the fifth and sixth. The bottom dead center appears between the third and fourth stroke. For its balanced operation, pistons are used that are connected to a planetary gear through a connecting rod. This gear rotates inside the ring and is connected to the crankshaft.
In this way, the piston reaches the dead points in the different positions and the six-stroke cycle occurs. With this system, systems can be included for Adjust compression ratio and timingimproving efficiency. It could even be used with synthetic fuels or hydrogen combustion. Not to mention that it can have more specific power than two- and four-cylinder engines, and that it could be adapted to inline, V- or boxer-type cylinder configurations.
