Fuel economy has become an important factor throughout the automobile sector irrespective of the engine displacement. The ever increasing fuel price across the world is the major reason behind the demand augmentation of the fuel efficient engines. Automobile engines especially the high capacity engines share maximum fuel consumption, and there has been demand in the industry to make these often high performance and large capacity multi cylinder engines frugal. To overcome the phenomenon best known as “Pumping Loss” in the big engines at the low load situation Variable Displacement Engines has been developed. Out of current generation popular Variable Displacement Engines are the engines catering to the drawbacks related to big engines at low loads via Cylinder Deactivation. But the Cylinder deactivation process is not that efficient, though it is efficient enough to save as good as 20% fuel, there is still room for improvement.
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The problem associated with Cylinder deactivation is, although the particular cylinder of the big multi cylinder engine gets deactivated with the help of temporary valve closure but the piston of the related cylinder keeps on moving inside the so called deactivated cylinder of the engine. This brings the unnecessary drag of the piston of the deactivated cylinder which is directly connected to the other pistons of the active cylinders through crankshaft. The unnecessary and till date unavoidable piston movement of the deactivated cylinder results into inefficiency, caused by drag and friction.
At Scalzo Automotive Research, they have developed a unique “Piston Deactivation Engine”. The engine is based on the theory of Variable Displacement Engine and seems to achieve the ideal representation of an active Cylinder Deactivation. A regular engine can be transformed into a Piston Deactivation Engine by implementing few very innovative regular chain link joints in the engine. Keeping the Head of the engine and the fueling management almost intact the Scalzo Piston Deactivation Engine can effectively stop the movement of the desired piston of the engine at a low load, while the other integrated parts connected to the piston still remain in sync with the moving crank along with the remaining moving pistons of the engine.
The actively deactivated piston of the Scalzo engine adds to the fuel efficiency of the engine by not moving at all and hence not producing any drag or friction whatsoever. The inactivity of the a chosen piston not only contributes to the increased fuel economy of the engine as more as 30% at low load but also it adds to the cleaner emissions. The Piston Deactivation Engine is an engine of future in all respects and it brings a hope of cleaner and more fuel efficient multi cylinder engines.
By: Farhan Kashif