Here’s a 4 stroke engine concept you have to see to understand, the Peraves Superballmotor uses a multipart sphere to replace the usual crankshaft, rods and pistons of a normal internal combustion engine.
The moving parts of the sphere have ceramic balls on their exterior which travel in grooves in the case surrounding the sphere. The rotating motion of the sphere causes the moving parts, which serve as pistons, to go through the 4 stroke cycle in 2 working chambers, which would be comparable to a 2 cylinder engine. Air and fuel are introduced at the sides near the rotating axis, are supercharged through the use of prechambers, flow into the gaps in the sphere created by the motion of the sphere, followed by compression, power and exhaust as you would expect. You have to watch the animation on their site to see the whole process because a description doesn’t work very well.
Peraves builds the Monotracer and the Ecomobile, fully enclosed 2 wheel motorcycles, which have been out there for some time, but I never saw this engine before, I don’t know if it’s new, but it’s new to me. They have it set up in a Yamaha YP-400 scooter and they say it can be built as a gasoline, diesel, CNG or hydrogen engine. As with any internal combustion engine, it can be used in various applications besides motor vehicles.
If you’re a reasonably experienced motorhead, you can understand how working on one machine can lead you to play with the parts in various ways and come up with variations that do something else entirely. But, after looking at the animation and understanding how it works, it’s seems like quite a stretch from any other engine or machine to this design, I’d be curious to know how that mental leap occured. What similar device would lead someone, by extension, to put pieces together this way.
It’s a very cool idea. Is it workable or better than other engines? Hard to say. Their website says it has many advantages in power to weight, lower cost and more power at lower rpm but their charts are small and hard to read so we’ll have to take their word for it. I’d like to hear it run and see some power numbers to form any conclusions, but, I think it’s neat, just from the concept itself, if it works really well, that’s even better.
Thanks for the tip, Petr!
Link: Peraves
Video below:
coho says
I watched the video on the Peraves site the other day following the link in llewellyn’s comment on the Carver article and immediately thought “this is a Kneelider thing” – seems I was right.
I’d love to hear a non-animated one run.
JR says
coho, I was just about to say the exact same thing… funny how that works
Yeah, it took me a little bit of staring to wrap my head around it, but it looks like it could be packaged even tighter than a Wankel… there’s gotta be a good use for that, even if it isn’t the most potent
very cool
FREEMAN says
Another interesting motor for your consideration.
Bob says
I don’t know if I’m missing something or not, but it looks like that sphere would hit the ends of the spark plugs and sheer them off? Or am I missing something?
coho says
FREEMAN, that is sofa king awesome I cannot even begin to express…
I’m seeing many very powerful two- and three-wheelers* in my head right now, all of them with the mighty MYT. Thanks for the link.
*I’m sure it would work in a car or truck, too, but who cares about those?
Hawk says
An engine with balls …. is there no end to inventiveness?
GenWaylaid says
It’s a brilliant idea at one level, but I can’t help looking at all those moving parts and thinking “sealing nightmare.” If it took decades of development to create a Wankel that didn’t burn through oil, what chance does this design have of keeping its oil and its fuel/air mixture in the right places as the parts wear?
Wave says
Wow! Very interesting. The animation is sensational. Theoretically, this should be easier to seal than a rotary as well, because all of the surfaces stay perpendicular to each other. The engine seems very well thought out, you can already see the oil galleries in the central shaft, presumably these would match up to galleries through the spherical “pistons” to lubricate the balls and seals, so it could all be pressure lubricated. It looks like it would be pretty dense though, all of the parts would seem to practically need to be solid castings/forgings. I want to see a real one running now!
David says
Bob if you closely at the combustion chamber faces the entire face does not mate there is a small combustion chamber that the spark plug or ignition source passes through. The black lines on the ball appear to act as piston rings and the see through casing has some very hard to see features pertaining to intake and exhaust
David says
It reminds me of a 21st century version of Heron’s aeolipile steam engine
pabs says
what a brilliant mind! it cant be sealed or machined easily cost effectively or reliably but who cares i enjoyed that animation very much,
piston engine = annular ring, case closed!
for those interested type ball motor new motor etc etc into youtube there is a lot of really creative stuff out there
WOL says
I don’t know if the sealing probelms would be that bad. At least every thing either osilates or rotates and the moving seals doesn’t follow a complex path at high speeds like a wankel.
Paulinator says
What’s wrong with the recip? Fix it!!!
What’s right with the recip? Keep it!!!
It looks like the torque is transmitted thru the ceramic balls. Are those balls rolling elements? What kind of pressure velocity are they subjected to? What kind of lubrication do they get? Will those balls get chaffed?
Round bores are easy to make and easy to seal. This design seams to use a type of curved apex seal.
Where does the waste heat go? What effect does this have on the shape and clearances of all those mating surfaces?
I LUV this stuff. I’d luv it more if I saw it run, though.
James Bowman says
Wierd I was just looking at it on youtube and trying to understand its operation better like two days ago. Its interesting and very creative I think I saw it almost a year ago for the first time though. Really cool lets see it run though.
Tin Man 2 says
What a concept, The IC engine is not dead. Star Trec engineering,great video!
Paulinator says
Anyone see the article in Scientific American about “grassoline”. Its a carbon-neutral and easily convertable energy source with VERY GOOD density. You can recharge your polypropylene (or stamped metal) storage cell a million times before it goes into a land-fill. Run your ICE on this stuff and you’re running on sunshine – once removed.
The ICE ain’t dead yet. It just doesn’t have that .com freshness after 130+ years.
DWolvin says
I remember they had the prototype installed in a scooter, and can’t seem to find any videos now… But it and the MYT engine sound like interesting projects, I really think they might be awesome for generator drive on a hybrid or some kind (ducks flame and bricks).
Miles says
Wow, just wow.
The video is 47MB, but it really shows how it works.
I would love to see one of these running in a vehicle.
Billy B says
FREEMAN @ 06.29.09 at 5:24 pm — very nice link!! now that’s an engine!!!! what an idea!! would like to see an article in the kneeslider on that motor!!
Azzy says
This sphere engine has some good thinking behind it. I wonder like some others how the seals will hold up, and how well it keeps lubrication.
The MYT engine posted above looks good, but some of the claims associate it, to me, with the stories of the 1950’s carb that got a V8 100mpg. Being that they keep putting out the “LLC” portion to the person reading it, it seems they are worried about the legitimacy of their claims.
Azzy says
(And might i add.. if they could show it running on air in video, why not show it running on fuel if they were doing so for 6 months, and why not have at least a golf cart powered by one as a demonstration unit?)
FREEMAN says
@ Azzy:
I hear ya. I just think such a concept engine is exciting because it could really revolutionize ICE engines as we know them, if indeed it ever comes to fruition.
scritch says
Yeah, it’s cool. But I agree there could be some problems. I guess the seal technology from the Wankels could be adapted for the combustion area of the engine. Seems like the combustion heat and waste products might be very abrasive to the seals, but Wankels work pretty well these days…
I don’t see lubing problems, just squirt in oil around the outside, and also pass some through rotating unions in the crankshaft. But cooling, though. Maybe pass coolant through similar junctions in the crank, and of course, all around the cranckase.
But how do you bore it oversize as it wears? And how about wear in the grooves that the little ceramic balls run in? Can you machine the grooves oversize and get bigger balls (don’t you wish)? No small-town machine shop is going to tackle this engine!
Kelly says
Interesting motor design. A couple of others that have some merit:
http://www.rkm-schapiro.org/ – a slightly different direction than wankel… has some potential, I’d say.
http://www.epindustries.com/cemco.html – a not-really-new idea that has some issues that still need resolving before it can be a viable engine. Makes a great pump, tho. One company was intending to produce a similar design for aircraft engines… can’t recall the name ATM…
Quadruple says
I can smell something wrong for this concept… because up until now, why there’s no attempt to make a physical prototype of it? You know.. a real-life 4-stroking mechanism.. machining is not that difficult though.. material doesn’t cost u 100 trillion.. so.. why not?
Latvian says
Wery big friction surface and only 1/4 torq of full spin. i think that fuel does not burn fully until it is excaused.