[fragged]

I was impressed with your dedication to your project it looks like this turned into a full on obsession :-) my experience with rotary valves is limited to only one engine a long time (30 years or more ) ago but thought it was a really good idea. I should think advances in materials makes it more viable now.

[Bdrangdo]

Over the years I have designed different variations of rotary valve engines and even built a few and have come to the conclusion it is somewhat like chasing rainbows. They looked promising in my head but when you start taking into account the enormous loads, expansion and the need to lubricate these valves and their bearings and fit it all in a limited space that needs cooling with space for a spark plug and an injector it starts to fall apart in reality. The biggest problem is in my opinion expansion, the exhaust valves have to have so much running clearance that there are compression losses which defeat the object often they will fail through distortion. Several of my designs used the same valve for exhaust and inlet keeping things a little cooler, others have coolant passages running through them. Another design uses a rotating cylinder again water cooled with valve ports in the cylinder wall, there are many others all of which would work - in a fashion but realistically none would have been any better than conventional valves. Far better than me have tried and failed, since the IC engine was invented people have been experimenting with them. The sleeve valve used by Bristol and others worked well but they never cured the excessive oil consumption. Probably the most successful so far is the Coates spherical engine which looks like your design but it has yet to stand the test in time. I wish you the very best of luck, many modern engines achieve their high power and efficiency through variable valve timing and in some cases mechanism to direct inlet flow to compensate for different engine conditions, both of which are difficult if not impossible to achieve with any kind of rotary valve. Rotary valves could be used to advantage on engines that maintain constant RPM and power ie in situations that will work well with fixed valve timing and have a constant thermal loading such as industrial engines or aero engines. Large diesel engines which could take advantage of the higher compression ratios achieved and cause less thermal stressing might be more suitable candidates than the average petrol car engine which needs a much wider power band that often takes advantage of VVT. Keep up the good work but just remember no matter how good your idea is someone will have already done it. We have the advantage over the old designers in that we have CAD and access to much better materials and manufacturing methods so revisiting these old ideas might have some merit and the patents will have expired, check out the Aspen engine for example. All the best Dave