For perfect propulsion, a motorcycle design: The '''continuous fuel combustion''' engine is an optimization of physics applied to motive force. We all know that the ubiquitous piston-engine (or "discrete fuel combustion" engine) that dominates the motorways. It has pistons that slap back and forth many times a second which translate into circular motion. It runs between 20-30% efficient; with fuel injection, there is a theoretical ~50% efficiency possible, but no one has built such an engine (AFAIK). Most of the energy still gets lost via the radiator and the constant inertial loss made by the mass of the pistons having to change to the opposite direction on each cycle. It has many moving parts because of its complexity which means it is also inefficient over the life of the engine, creating maintenance burdens. The inefficiency of piston engines also means that a transmission (or mechanical speed converter) is necessary for road use because you can't "rev" the motor at high speeds without it falling apart and you are limited at the bottom end by stalling. This converter itself is complex and means more weight and inefficiency. Secondly, the piston engine requires hi-voltage sparks which creates a need for energy generation. An alternator and hi-voltage transformer. More inefficiency and complexity. A CFC engine on the other hand, can be likened more to a jet engine, in that one has turbine fins along a cylindrical axis which rotates. Call it a 1-stroke engine. The idea is ''continuous'' propulsion along the entire length where the explosion expands. Speed is determined solely by fuel rate. There is only one spark to start the reaction until your burn is done. Since there are few moving parts, speed is limited only by fricative forces on the primary bearings holding the rotational load. RPM rates are not as limited because you're creating a very efficient conversion from outward force to rotary motion (no changing direction of piston heads). Very efficient. I would estimate that it would be nearly 4x more efficient than current piston engines, and possibly less then half the weight as there's now no need for a transmission. Further, maintenance and parts inventory is about 1/100th of current engines. ''This design will make every car on the road obsolete. '' Now, for the motorcycle, take two of those, mount one on each side of a two-wheeled bike, with a direct drive to a double-sided, singly-geared hub. Each turbine revolves towards the center of the bike to prevent (unlikely) resonance that could tear the bike apart. Helical gears on the drive train for continuous, smooth force distribution. No transmission is necessary: fuel flow controls the amount of force and an ignitor at the foot to start the combustion from stop to go. Pressurized fuel system (patent pending), rather than a fuel pump, that is initially set when re-filling tank via a hand lever with over-center clamp. A bleeder-piston between engine combustion chamber and the fuel tank that uses a small fraction of the pressure from the combustion to maintain a fixed air pressure at the top of the tank, for the full range of acceleration. Once you get up to speed with the assistance of the pressure, gravity and the "bleeder-piston" will do the rest to keep consistent fuel availability. Rear tire should be fat and rounded, perhaps as much as a foot wide, to prevent skidding at high-speed on corners with debris. Consider front and rear tires being interchangeable, but might make the front wheel too massive for steering, but then this thing is made for high speeds where it won't be a factor. One could even consider the rim to be interchangeable, since there's not much complexity like chains or gears. Front faring should at least cover the top half of the wheel where it rotates opposite of forward direction. Rear faring covers back of the wheel only enough to prevent water from flying up towards rider. Horn? Real motorcyclists don't honk through traffic, they ''accelerate''. Color: Black or all Chrome so you never see it moving. A panel on right-side of the bike so you can show where you've been. Capacity to take one passenger along. Name: Cobra Velociraptor. Boom. -- MarkJanssen, (patent pending; engine co-patent with Britain; inspiration from a Disney movie.) ''Sounds like you've re-invented (or just developed an appreciation for) the gas turbine. Unfortunately, it's inefficient for human transportation outside of aircraft, particularly because it's so technically awkward (read: needs a transmission, a '''lot''' of transmission) to convert the high-speed, low-torque, narrow-speed-range output of the turbine into the relatively low-speed, high-torque, wide-speed-range force required to drive a passenger vehicle at normal road speeds. Major manufacturers have been trying to put turbine power into passenger vehicles since the mid 1950s, with limited success. The end result tends to be less fuel efficient than a piston engine, and considerably more costly to manufacture because it's expensive to make heat exchangers -- which you need, to absorb noise and prevent the hot exhaust igniting nearby pedestrians -- and turbine blades that can withstand the extreme stresses to which the turbine spool and ancillary ducting are subjected. There are some turbine-powered motorcycles, but they're mostly show pieces or one-off experimentals -- not practical, even by the usual motorcycle standards which admit a pretty broad definition of "practical".'' When I google "gas turbine" I see jet-type engines of absurd complexity. This engine would not need it. As far as torque/speed, there are ways to handle that, make your outer "shell' strong to handle the explosions acting as the compressor, so the energy gets converted into torque. ''The "absurd complexity" is to provide necessities like oil circulation, cooling, fuel pump, electrical power generation, starter motor, exhaust heat recovery, a multi-stage turbine spool so you can stall the engine without having to re-start it, air bleed (to power accessories), transmission for shaft-drive, engine monitoring systems, hydraulic power, and so on. Turbine engines can be quite simple, though. An Allison 250 is simple and has been used on a limited-production motorcycle. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allison_Model_250'' No, there is no need for all those vanes for "compressing the air". That takes work to accomplish, so you're going to get no yield of extra energy. Totally wrong. Electrical power generation? Show me. I think no physicist designed jet engines. ''Actually, there is a need for all those vanes "compressing the air". Without it, you don't have a gas turbine that generates power, you have -- at best -- a really inefficient gas burning heater. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1TqwAKwMuM‎ to learn how a jet engine works. As for electrical power generation, I assume you intend to have lights on your motorcycle? If so, you're going to need an alternator to recharge the battery, and your jet engine is a good way to power it.'' ''As for the "outer 'shell'", the problem is not shell strength. The problem is that the compressor needs to turn at high speed in order to maintain a high enough intake pressure to continuously compress the air-fuel mixture and keep the expanding combustion gasses from exiting through the intake. The alternative is a reed valve or other intake control mechanism. These are used in pulsejet engines, but they have their own problems.'' This is bullshit, you simply are not a physicist. You've been programmed by the NovusOrdoSeclorum. ''I don't have to be a physicist to know how a jet engine works. I haven't been "programmed by the NovusOrdoSeclorum", I've been taught by engineers.'' ''By the way, a 1-foot wide front tyre will make the bike handle like a speedboat with a heavy rudder. It's fine for off-road use, but on-road... No.'' I don't think so. As long as the tire pressure is maintained, your contact patch should still be small enough not to cause problems. Your issue is applicable to turning, but that can be counteracted with leaning into the curve and maintaining speed. But it is making me think a bit, there will be tire wear on the front during turns with a slow-sloped fat tire. Proper tread might handle that. ''It won't cause problems per se, it just won't handle very well. It's fine for a low, slow cruiser or an off-road bike, but not very nimble around the twisties or in town. Not that it hasn't been done before. See http://thekneeslider.com/american-motorcycles-300-front-tire-movie-chopper/ and http://www.totalmotorcycle.com/motorcycles/2013models/2013-Yamaha-TW200.htm'' One foot may be too much, but really the only issue is the gyroscopic effect. ''The main issue is flicking all that weight around.'' ---- [[STUB]] Extra thoughts... We have a machine that's going to be accelerating and decelerating often. Since were aiming for efficiency, we need a way to transfer power back and forth between the bike mass to the turbines. Consider mechanically transferring forward momentum to a flywheel(s), for braking. and then transferring it back to the turbine to restart. The flywheel is, if done right, is the main brake. A secondary, caliper brake on the front wheel augments stopping power and control. Have the flywheel spin in the direction so that emergency stop pulls downward towards the front of the bike, possibly activating a friction bar at the top of the wheel. Front wheel won't lock, as on a normal bike. No need to dissipate power through friction and heat. Flywheel momentum is a function of mass, speed (rpm), and radius. Mass on the bike for the flywheel is fine as long as it gets transferred efficiently back to the turbine to ready propulsion, speed practicality will be limited to friction, radius is good because mass increases exponentially towards the circumference. Think a cylindrical mass about a foot long made of a heavy metal (uranium tailings?) Coupling between flywheel and turbines can be direct, straight-line, surface-to-surface clutching. ''Not unless you can invent a slow-speed, high-torque, wide-speed-range turbine engine. Otherwise, you'll need a transmission to match the high-speed, low-torque, narrow-speed-range output of a typical gas turbine to the low-speed, high-torque, wide-speed-range requirements of passenger vehicles.'' * Yeah, well that's what I'm talking about. It's something like this guy's attempt on youtube: http://youtu.be/Ri5RDv0ihzA, but that design is wrong, he's only capturing the energy going parallel to the outer shell. This design would use axial vanes, converting the outward explosions going to the edge of the shell, into forward thrust. * ''His design isn't a gas turbine. It's just a fan. Axial turbines are fine, but the same limitations apply. To work, you're going to have to spin the spool very fast, at relatively constant speed, compared to the zero-to-low RPM of the driveshaft.'' **Why do you talk like you know what you're doing? ** ''Because I know what I'm doing.'' Question: Put the clutching mechanism at the brakes to transfer power from bike to flywheel, or at the turbine? If at the turbine, it will spin at stop/idle, if at the flywheel it will spin. For fuel control, pressurize the fuel into a tank at refill station or perhaps use a line from the combustion chamber to pressurize the tank. Controlled by dual throttles at handle-bars or at feet since transmission control no longer necessary, one at each limb. The idea for separate throttles for each turbine is to '''master the bike'''. The body picks up subtle forces which will inform the rider of the *state* of each side of power. ''Your dual throttles are literally frightening. There's a good reason dual engines are illegal in many jurisdictions; loss of synchronisation can, under the right circumstances, result in a significant amount of kinetic energy -- equal to the difference in power output between the engines -- being directed away from the normal direction of travel.'' * Haha, that's why it's my bike and not yours. I don't want it to be mass produced. I want the user to have to master it. ;^) * ''Good luck mastering it when one engine cuts out and the power differential launches you into the weeds approximately 0.25 seconds faster than your brain can react.'' Note: the concern over compression on a discrete-combustion engine (i.e. piston engine) is a RedHerring. Compression ratios are only useful in checking the integrity (seals of valve and piston rings) of an engine. Compression does not ''generate'' power, but a engine that doesn't hold compression won't convert the energy of combustion into mechanical motion very efficiently. The compression stroke actually decreases efficiency because the engine is having to do work to compress the air, so best to keep the valves open -- that work may or may not be recovered during the combustion stroke. ''Compression ratios have nothing to do with "checking the integrity of an engine". Compression is necessary, and the higher the compression ratio, the higher the potential efficiency of the engine (for a given fuel). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_ratio starting with a "high compression ratio is desirable..."'' Compression is only necessary on a diesel engine, where it is used in place of a high-voltage spark to ignite the fuel. PayMeLater. ''Compression is necessary on any conventional internal combustion engine. Without it, the thermal expansion of the burning fuel will be inefficient and won't produce enough power to do useful work. Some very early piston engines were compressionless, but as a result were very low-powered. In-cylinder compression is what makes modern engine designs efficient and powerful. Note that the energy required to compress the fuel-air mixture is like compressing a spring; all the compression energy -- minus negligible losses as heat -- is returned in the expansion.'' You see, you're one of the deluded. Indeed, in a spring it is returned, but then there is a certain resonant frequency in which no work is involved. In a car engine, you're not in that fixed range where the natural return rate is equal to the rotation of the crank. If you were to tie your spring to a heavy pendulum, you'd be oscillating chaotically all over the place, and the work you did to compress the energy would hardly be turned into useful work. ''No, I don't see that I'm one of the deluded. If I did, I wouldn't be deluded. It's also not clear to me what point you're trying to make. Are you suggesting that in a piston engine, the compression and decompression rate will not be at the natural resonant frequency of the air in the cylinder? I suppose that's true, but the resulting inefficiency (emitted as heat) is negligible. Attempting to eliminate that effect by building a compressionless engine would result in much, much greater inefficiency.'' ''You might find the following infographic helpful for understanding how modern piston engines work: http://animagraffs.com/how-a-car-engine-works/'' [I think he has switched back to arguing his "inertial loss theory". All he's managed to accomplish with the switch is to show he doesn't really understand springs either.] Ideal fuel is probably leaded gasoline. ''Leaded gasoline? Really? Haven't we spewed enough lead, other additives and hydrocarbons into the atmosphere? A benefit of turbine engines is they can burn flammable rubbish that piston engines cannot.'' Here's the thing, it's not leaded gasoline that was really ever the hazard -- it was millions of cars on the road, period. The cost of un-leading gasoline probably negates the imagined environmental benefits. ''Lead in gasoline is an additive; it does not occur naturally. It's cheaper not to add it. For gas turbine purposes, gasoline has a low flash point which makes it dangerous. You're better off using Jet A, diesel fuel or kerosene, which have a higher flash point than gasoline and are all relatively affordable.'' That's not what I learned. They call it ''un''leaded because they had to take the lead ''out''. ''You learned wrong. You're probably confusing gas with coffee. Coffee naturally has caffeine that has to be removed to make it decaffeinated. Gasoline doesn't naturally have tetraethyl lead, so it's left out to make unleaded gas. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead'' [[Claim regarding fossil fuels removed.]] The turbines to drive-train:wheel to braking/flywheel to turbines forms a complete loop-cycle of power maintenance, going up or down, minimizing loss, for a perfect system of motive force. ''See above re the problems of gas turbines in passenger vehicles.'' Thought.... Rim braking will make it easier to stop with less force and wear. ''Rim braking is good, but fails utterly if the rim is even slightly warped. It's better to use a rim-mounted disc, like on this Buell:'' http://shark.armchair.mb.ca/~dave/Buell_disk_brake.jpg Hmm, that would be acceptable. I think rim being warped won't be a problem, though. Bicyclists already solved that problem by having a single pull for the two sides. ''The problem isn't that the brakes cause the rim to be warped, but the fact that braking force is drastically reduced if the rim becomes warped.'' ---- For braking, a second geared assembly, going to a weighted flywheel. Wanting good acceleration, means less mass and maximize radius. Upon unthrottling, the drive train is released, the gear is removed from the rear wheel. A second lever for braking applies the flywheel braking to the outer rim. Faring should go all the way to the aft-end of the wheel for catching water. Electricity generation: needed? Spark needs minimal. Perhaps at power-down, turn excess flywheel energy over to a generator. Stand…? A two-sided one raising the rear tire? or a side-one, breaking symmetry? Full rounded hubs covering the entirety of both wheels so nothing comes into the gears or front brake pad. Rounded especially on front wheel so corners taken on bike don't create a sail effect. Full torque has to be enough to leave everyone in the dust. For this reason weight must be displaced towards the front and the rider leaning full-forward. Aerodynamic at both front and back to slipstream, unnoticeable by the air. Panels on each side of the bike to show where its been (country stickers…??). ''Braking-force recovery systems based on electrical storage may be viable. A mechanical flywheel heavy enough to be useful will consume any benefit of its operation in the inefficiencies of lugging around all that weight. It will destroy the handling of the motorcycle, too.'' ''The future of alternative motorcycle power is almost certainly electrical. The monster zero-RPM torque of an electric motor makes for crazy acceleration, and its relative efficiency and compact size makes electric power highly effective. See, for example, http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/eu/ My next motorcycle, when my Honda VFR800 wears out, will almost certainly be electric.'' ----- The "the constant inertial loss made by the mass of the pistons having to change to the opposite direction on each cycle" doesn't exist. You could use the same argument against rotating engines...any given part of a rotating object reverses direction with each half-rotation. Big expensive turbines can gain efficiency by using high combustion temperatures and expansion ratios, special cooling systems, exotic materials, many stages, having high volume to surface area ratios, etc. Tiny motorcycle turbines aren't going to be as efficient, and may well be less efficient than an equivalent sized piston engine. Turbines also store a substantial amount of energy in the rotating parts, making them slower to increase or decrease power output, and bringing up the next point... For flywheel storage, a heavy material like uranium is exactly the opposite of what you want. You don't want to maximize momentum, you want to maximize kinetic energy. Both are directly proportional to mass, but energy is proportional to the square of the rotation rate...you want something with the highest strength to weight ratio you can get, spinning as fast as possible. Energy storage flywheels are often made of wound fiber composites, or in one recent approach, simply a loop of bundled fibers, and are actually a relatively dense way to store energy. I wouldn't consider them ideal for a motorcycle, though. * Huh? what physics do you come from because in mine we have conservation of rotational momentum which is determined by mass, the square of the radius, and speed. And changing of direction is significant, try it yourself: rotate a wheel versus a piston crank: the wheel has 10x the rotation time over best lubed piston motor, yes? --MarkJanssen20131124 (for equal mass --MarkJanssen20131126) ** What are you going on about conservation of momentum for? Nothing I said suggests momentum isn't conserved. As for your wheel example, ''every portion'' of the wheel is constantly changing direction. The reciprocating motion of the pistons just isn't wasted work, it's coupled to the crankshaft and alternately transferring momentum back and forth between the crankshaft and pistons. The concept of an "inertial loss" due to changing direction just doesn't exist in real physics: an undamped mass-spring system will happily oscillate forever. Real world examples are clearly limited by friction: adding mass to a pendulum will make it swing longer before stopping, quite the opposite of what would be expected from your "inertial losses". * ''The difference is due to friction.'' ** No. *** Do you really think multiple bearings and sliding seals won't have more friction? ** ''Yes, it's true. A piston and crank are balanced; the crank has a counterbalance and (usually) a balanced flywheel to absorb jolt caused by the combustion pulses. It has to be balanced or it would quickly vibrate itself to pieces.'' ** Okay, but what has "balance" to do with friction? *** The balance bit is a red herring. It is relevant to vibration losses, but those are relatively minor. It's all about friction (assuming the valves have been removed so the engine's not acting as a compressor). ** ''You appear to suggest that there is inertial loss due to pistons changing direction. There isn't, because the piston/crank assembly is balanced. The energy loss is due to friction.'' ---- ''Let me get this straight.'' ''A host of Professional engineers -- a title requiring both intensive training and years of real-world experience (so any lies they hear in engineering school are disabused by the laws of physics themselves), have developed a series of over-complicated turbine engines, while you have a ''patent pending'' design for a CFC engine that is much simpler, for the purpose of powering a motorcycle? And those who disagree simply don't get it, and have been programmed by the NovusOrdoSeclorum?'' ''So far, you may be the one-in-a-million genius who can revolutionize the industry. That being said, it's much more likely that you simply don't know what you're talking about, just by the law of averages. If you are that one-in-a-million shot, the only way you're going to be taken seriously is to RaceTheDamnedCar...er...bike.'' ''And it's not like the Powers That Be can stop you. If you can scrape up a few thousand USD, you can likely find a machine shop that can build your parts to spec (unless you need some exotic materials; certainly, regular turbines often do for their vanes). Even if there is a Great Otto Cycle Conspiracy (or Otto/Diesel/Turbine Cycle conspiracy), your average machine shop hasn't been co-opted into it.'' ''And after simplifying the motor, you want to re-complicate matters by putting a second one in, complete with the completely unnecessary risk of flaming death. And then you want to feed it leaded gasoline? Why, for added octane? There are friendlier ways to raise the octane these days. And a uranium flywheel? Oh, but you won't need a transmission. What does the torque vs. RPM curve look like on the CFC?'' ''And then you go on about inertial losses, proving that you have no clue what you're talking about and dropping out of the one-in-a-million category.'' ''You're starting to sound like TopMind.'' ''--RobMandeville'' Okay Mr. "Engineer", you had me up to the point where you joined the choir above about dismissing inertial losses. The inertial loss, mind you will be mainly of the mass of the piston, not the whole crank assembly which is made (unnecessarily) more massive by having to need counter-weights on the opposite end of the piston crank. Show me an artificially-weighted piston (so that the truth of what I'm saying will be more observable) that maintains its spin (i.e. rotational momentum) after you remove power that compares to a equally-massed wheel. Go on. I dare you. Thanks for listening in any case. Then help fund me so I can get the heck out of poverty. -- MarkJanssen {Look at the Earth and moon. They haven't stopped turning yet. Your "inertial losses" do not exist. (If you stretch, you could consider radiation of gravitational waves to be such a loss, but it's clearly not an issue for small engines. There's no other physical basis for a loss.)} ''Wait, pistons have rotational momentum? I must have missed that class. Last I checked, pistons travel in a straight line.'' ''A piston in a cylinder will slow down much faster than a free-spinning wheel, but that's due to friction. The piston is in a tight metal sleeve (cylinder) and lightly scraping against it, converting kinetic energy into waste heat. Make a wheel slide against a tight metal sleeve, it will also slow down right quick. That's how brakes work - squeezing a spinning wheel or disc against something. The kinetic energy converts into waste heat, making the brakes hot. You can even gather your own SelfStandingEvidence; see how hot your brakes get after heavy braking, like stopping from highway speeds. Don't touch it with your bare hands; just hold them an inch or two away and see. --RobMandeville'' [Yes, pistons have angular momentum. Everything physical has angular momentum. You are otherwise correct though.] Do this experiment then, don't put the piston in a tight metal sleeve. Put it a loose one. Make it heavy, so that if your theory is correct you won't notice any problem (because your claim is that there's no inertial loss in switching directions). But if my statement is correct you will notice it slow down for equal mass and roughly equal radius'd wheel. There, atomic bonds are in your favor providing extra centrifugal (i.e. smooth and continuous rather than discrete) support. * Read the link, thanks. Quite amusing to hear the physicist make up shit. If it helps, do it for a simple pendulum, or a mass hanging from a lossless spring. A simple undamped harmonic oscillator. Without friction, what happens? Constant amplitude oscillation without end. No "inertial losses" anywhere, no matter how large the mass or how quickly it oscillates. * That's great, but it's a different dynamic. The spring is doing a job holding following Hooke's equation. But your "physicist" says a heavy piston won't make a difference compared to a light one. But imagine a super-dense material that makes the piston weigh a ton -- your explosion isn't going to be able to do the (Work=force*distance, force=mass*acceleration) WORK to move that piston because the fuel output is fixed/static. It will move a very small amount and you'll need ''more'' cylinders helping you to turn the crankshaft a full cycle or you'll stall. PayMeLater?. * ''Due to inertia, a small, light piston is easier to start moving and easier to stop than a large, heavy piston. However, that has nothing to do with your claim that there are "inertial losses" due the piston changing direction. There aren't. In a piston and crank assembly, the reciprocating motion is converted losslessly -- aside from friction and vibration -- to rotational motion.'' ** "Due to inertia, a small piston is easier to start moving". Right, and at the top ''and'' bottom of each rotation, the piston '''stops'''. Take a crank-arm and move it back and forth (in the cylinder if you wish) ''by hand''. Are you having to do work? Newton's First Law says you'll have to expend energy. Now compare to maintaining rotational momenta. (Didn't I say you'd pay me later?) ** *** Inertial losses don't emit energy, they're merely dissipating energy from elsewhere that was already applied at a prior moment. Consider billiard ball mechanics. A ball on the table must be given energy to move from its stationary position. The amount of energy is proportional to the amount of mass of the ball. Once the first ball hits the second ball, the first ball often will stop completely as all it's kinetic energy has been transferred to the second ball. (In this strange physics you're suggesting...) Inertial loss happens simply because the piston is not perfectly coupled to the crankshaft -- it has a piston arm rotating back and forth underneath the piston head. If you were to perform this action yourself, you would be doing work on both sides of the action, slowing it down while it reaches the top of the cylinder and speeding it up during your simulated combustion movement. I don't understand why you're arguing with me if you don't understand engines. *** ** If you have a super-dense piston, I'll agree that it's going to take a lot more fuel to get it moving at any rate of speed, even just to get it past the stall speed. In effect, the mass of the piston is "absorbing" the energy as kinetic energy (inertia). But it isn't an inertial loss, because the energy is still there. Once you get that super-heavy engine running, you can cut the fuel supply and it will still spin for a long time, providing power to whatever is attached to the crankshaft. In effect, the super-heavy pistons make the engine a bit more of a flywheel as well. *** Exactly. The pistons are coupled to the rotating crankshaft, and via it to the other pistons, if any. Increasing the piston mass simply increases the net angular moment of inertia of the whole assembly. It takes more energy to get rotating because it stores more energy while rotating, not because of some mysterious "inertial losses". The constant transfer of energy/momentum around makes it harder to see that everything is conserved, which is why I suggested looking at simpler cases of reciprocating motion, which clearly demonstrate that there is no such loss. And where would such losses go? If you were right, changes in motion would lose energy...to where? * That loss is effectively in the equations for translating your fuel output into mechanical motion. * In reality, losses are via friction and produce heat, and a tiny fraction to vibration and an utterly minuscule fraction (currently measurable only at astronomical scales) to gravitational radiation. If things worked the way you claim, the energy would just vanish. * Well they turn into entropy at the macro scale -- your engine eventually breaks down. In closing, I can only conclude that there are two physics operating. A poster above suggests that in a rotating wheel "every part of the wheel is changing direction". That is correct from the observers frame of reference. But from the wheel's frame, it is following a kind of Reimann curve and effectively travels in a ''straight'', closed-loop universe. Rather interesting really. --MarkJanssen * ''But irrelevant. Your original point is incorrect about there being "inertial losses" due to the back-and-forth motion of a piston in piston-crank system.'' * Not just irrelevant: wildly, ludicrously wrong, and he's utterly failing at throwing around terminology he doesn't understand in an attempt to impress. The components of a rotating wheel are not following geodesics in spacetime, and "following a kind of Reimann curve" is a nonsensical sequence of words. A wheel is not a closed universe. Mark, you've got problems understanding basic Newtonian mechanics (including such basic principles as conservation of energy), don't try to disguise them by throwing random jargon from relativity theory into the mix. ** You don't understand what you're saying. Newtonian mechanics say nothing about "conservation of energy" -- that would be "thermodynamics". In any case, the piston is not perfectly coupled to the crankshaft, so you lose energy and it's no longer acting as a single unit. ** ** "Inertial loss" ''is'' the name I gave it. When the piston is traveling in the direction towards the top of the cylinder (all valves open, without compression), it's going to take '''''work''''' to slow and ''decelerate'' the piston. Did you think '''friction''' slowed it down to 0 m/s? No. ** ** [Yes the piston does work when it slows down. This work is done on other parts of the engine. Furthermore, when the piston is accelerating back in the other direction, the other parts of the system do work on the piston. In the end, they (mostly) cancel out. It's only mostly because some energy is lost to friction and vibration.] **Now you are throwing around terminology. I do understand what I'm saying. You just said "geodesics in spacetime". I didn't claim that. We're not going close to light-speed, so you can take the crankshaft rotation as a stationary object relative to the car and to the universe. *** A geodesic is a generalization of a straight line. Your claim that each part of a wheel is 'following a kind of Reimann curve and effectively travels in a ''straight'', closed-loop universe' was a claim that the components of the wheel are following geodesics in that universe. It has nothing at all to do with how fast anything is going: anything in an inertial (non-accelerating) frame is following a geodesic in spacetime. The frame of a rotating crankshaft or reciprocating piston is clearly '''not''' inertial. And none of this is relevant to the issue at hand, which is a misunderstanding of basic Newtonian mechanics. *** However, you were actually correct in one detail: you ''can'' take the crankshaft as stationary, and in fact you can make a working engine with a stationary crankshaft. The engine then rotates around the crankshaft. And the pistons? They just rotate around their own segments of the crankshaft. This is another way of demonstrating that your "inertial losses" do not exist. *** Not what I was talking about when I said "stationary". You have a misunderstanding. ---- NovemberThirteen ---- CategoryPhysics