Hydraulic Hybrids revisited

[Air-Hybrid]

Mech,

Thanks for another illuminating post! I agree fully that simplicity is king for a new concept. Indeed my biggest problem often is that, having had a good simple idea I will then 'bolt-on' all sorts of extra systems in the hope of making it work!

Your (so-called lunatic) points about steam are actually most valid - being a technology that has fallen by the wayside, but is by no means out of the running.
Have you come across this design:
Cyclone Power Technologies - How It Works

It appears a good, workable idea that could be scaled to work as an auto-engine.
The biggest hang up with steam (as with all external heat engines) is the start up time - as drivers want to jump in & go...

Of course with hybrids some of those arguments go away. Indeed if compressed air can be used to test boilers, etc - It can certainly run pistons for a short time during 'heat-up'.

The big plus with all piston drives is they develop max torque at zero revs - so goodbye gearbox!


Free piston engines via one or other type of fluid drive still strikes me as an elegant solution, especially with the averaging effect of an accumulator.
I, too, have come across the INGOCAR design and have been similarly impressed with its clever simplicity. HCCI is, as you say, going to bring technology jumps at least on a par with those realised through the introduction of fuel injection, only at the cost of even more intense reliance on computer control (with a slight feeling of regret for the tinkerers amongst us!).
I still find the animation of the engine/pump difficult to follow in terms of the gas path through the engine. I also wonder if there would be even more advantage to adding turbo-charging or other exhaust power recovery in this configuration than in a traditional engine.

I think the lesson in all these pursuits, is there is still room for the little guy in pushing tomorrow's ideas! I hope to see yours on the streets real soon!


Cheers, Tom

[Jammer]

Mech, I find your story VERY interesting. I can relate, in part, to the frustrations of being an inventor. I have my own invention and story but it has nothing to do with cars. Please read my story, it does have much to do with living the life of an inventor...

I am the inventor of "Heavy Metal Banjo" - which gets a laugh from many people, but I am serious and I spent a good ten years trying to prove to all of the guys spending $3000 and more for electric guitars for use in heavy distorted music such as metal that they were wasting there money because such a tone comes from electronics and fretboards, and to prove it I made the bold statement that I could get the same tone out of my banjo. Over almost ten years of working on this project I could finally get the SAME TONE out of my mostly unmodified GIBSON 250 5-string BANJO that expensive guitars such as a Fender Strat can. My range of octaves was limited to the higher notes, but I learned how to tune down real low and play along with most any ROCK KEY. I soon discovered that a SOLID BODY banjo could do what I wanted with no problem- But my goal was to make a regular banjo with it's drum-like head mounted, sound like a Fender Strat.

I had many hurdles to get over. I had to invent many little parts, and one very important part of which I was doing all I could to get it patented- I had many guitar electronics and banjo books to learn from, but it was just enough to get me started. Over a period of a couple years I was doing private patent searches when another banjo player gave me a link. It was a link to a US patent filed during the jazz era of 4 string banjos in the 1920's in which somebody else had ALREADY invented my super banjo-head mute which was not found in any store, nor found on any banjo I had ever seen, nevertheless somebody had THOUGHT of it decades before I had. Without this special type of head mute it is impossible to over-drive the tone of a banjo with a amp-speaker set up without a very loud whistling sound that would almost break your eardrums, a pure high tone constant feedback loop from the banjo-head and the amp's speaker, to a small degree it can be good, but not to the degree my tests gave me- that noise had to be removed..

In the end I proved my case, I do have MP3s of some of the better stuff that has me playing what sounds like old school heavy metal guitar (but it's not a guitar) and other well known guitar player's style. I used Bill Lawrence guitar rail pickups installed on the banjo's truss rod with holes cut in the clear plastic head mounting them about 1/8 inch from the strings, used plenty of guitar electronics for tube distortion, a cry baby wah pedal made popular in woodstock, and I invented a method to play using 3 finger picks and use the pinky finger for hammer-on notes. Many other things had to be made or done that I am skipping over. I sank a chunk of my life inventing this stuff. Nobody else until that time in the mid 1990s had ever came close to making a standard style bluegrass banjo with the plastic head on, capable of producing this tone.

When I finally realized a patent was not very likely, I searched into all sorts of ways to profit from this stuff. I thought at the very least I could get an edge on a gig and freak people out buy hiding the pickups under a white banjo-head and get on stage and start playing bluegrass and then WHAM convert over into some grunge distortion. I played in a few bars, I took my idea to big people etc.... I never made a dime on it, but I learned a lot. The last time I searched on Google for "heavy metal banjo" I could be found somewhere on the first page, now I may not even be on that page. Nevertheless I did get credit. It's too bad the kind of credit I got was not the kind I could use to pay the rent with.

What makes me happy is that I did something everyone said could not be done. It was a lot of work of trial and error until I perfected the tone and freaked out many people when they seen what I played and the resulting sound. I will always be proud of it, but I find people either love the electric heavy metal banjo, or they prefer the more traditional tones, OR like most people- they HATE BANJOS! haha

Don't let the idea that so far you have not made $$. You will leave a legacy behind and YOU will always get credit for your work, from all you have said here. And I get credit for my work, and never made more than a few $$ on sold MP3s- so I count that 0 profit. I expected to change the entertainment industry, yet many did not believe I was real, many thought I was tricking them, and others OFTEN said "Why not just play a guitar?" ARGH... They never could understood that the whole point was to do something that everyone told me could not be done. Anyone that takes a standard banjo and drys to play like Metallica will need some serious modifications made to get the tone I did.

It all boiled down to no market for my invention. I do feel if I had came out with this stuff back in the 1960's it would of went over big time. But in the 1990's the world had changed too much. I keep looking for somebody to tell me "good job" and all I got was looks of sorry from people. I learned a lot though....

It's not about money$$. It's about doing something we are proud of so we know when our number comes up we left our mark on this world.

I love your story you are the man for the job. I think the problem is we have an army of inventors in the world. The good ideas sometimes are not really discovered until many years after an inventor gives up. Be happy that you invented something that has so much potential. You may very well see the day somebody sees the fruits of all of your labor. At least I feel YOUR invention has a much better chance of making $$ than my HEAVY METAL BANJO invention does!!




I NO LONGER LOOK THIS WAY! PEOPLE CAN CHANGE A LOT!!

[user removed]

http://www.innas.com/Assets/files/Hydrid%20brochure.pdf

I posted this link before, but it's easier to put it here again.

In 1970 when I red about the Opel wagon that got 124 MPG by using pulse and EOC glides the thought that it could increase mileage by almost 400% intrigued me.

You can't increase engine efficiency by 400% so how was it physically possible to increase mileage by 400%.

Part of the answer was they increased the engine efficiency by 100%, by not allowing the engine to run unless it was at its highest BSFC.

Understanding that, how did they get to 400%.

If you take the time to read the INNAS link above, it becomes clear how they managed it 39 years ago.

They used the vehicle as a capacitive energy storage system and covered most of the distance with the engine off.

In the linked INNAS vehicle the engine only needed to run 11.9% of the time the vehicle was being driven.

I wonder how that percentage compared to the on-off cycle of the old Opel which was accelerated to 45 MPH and coasted with engine off down to 15MPH. The average speed was 26 MPH, which is very close to the current EPA city driving cycle average speed.

If your are following my train of thought, you should be at the point where you ask.

That's great but how do we make it a practical vehicle for public use? I pondered that for 30 years. The INNAS design is a practical vehicle, which proves it is possible. The admit their system is not as efficient as a conventional power train as far as energy losses if you limit your comparison to a manual transmission and their hydraulic power train. They also explain that the ability to cycle the engine and regenerate deceleration forces more than compensated for the higher losses in the HH versus conventional power train comparison.

Now that is where my design comes into play. The INNAS design utilizes fixed displacement in wheel pumps and transformers. My design utilizes infinitely variable drives in the wheels and requires no transformers. Their design is always moving fluid through the pumps and transformers which creates losses. My design eliminates displacement altogether., with no fluid movement unless energy is applied or recovered.

My objective was to make the hydraulic drive system as efficient or even more efficient than a conventional manual transmission power train. By eliminating the moving fluid or the interfacing of gears my design basically eliminates the power train altogether when coasting. In a conventional power train the gears are constantly in mesh, with fluid creating resistance between them, even when they are doing no practical work.

Some hydraulic pumps today are approaching 96% efficiency. With accumulators approaching 99% efficiency, you can recover the energy at a rate of 96X99x96. That's 91.2384% efficient. That number will equal or beat any conventional power train that allows gear selections. Compare it to the military HUMMER that loses 17% of the energy in the power train.

The point is when you have the ability to place the energy at the wheels MORE efficiently than a conventional setup, you have the potential to reach that magic 400% of the original Opel, possibly even to surpass that percentage.

Now for the sake of not letting this become a heated debate, lets assume my assumptions are correct based on the evidence provided.

If my design is capable of the efficiency I believe it is, it will require a functional prototype to prove it without any doubt. That's a very expensive proposition. I offer this as proof. After looking at the design for one year the students at tech, with the support of their professor (a MIT Doctor in Engineering) they concluded.

"The hydraulic pump motor has a significant potential for vehicular use"
"The overall concept of the design should provide cheap and economical vehicular transportation which should rival the efficiencies of electric powered vehicles."

Those are quotes from their document.

That does not take into consideration any aerodynamic or low rolling resistance tires. It also does not assume any improvement in engine efficiency.

The recent developments in HCCI engines would be much easier to perfect if the engine ran only at its ideal BSFC. In fact current development may already be there.

Basically that means any improvement outside the drive train would amplify the drive train improvements since the system is automatically compensating for those improvements.

As we progress to the ultimate vehicle every less significant energy loss becomes amplified as you eliminate the much larger percentage losses.
Basjoos demonstrates clearly how aerodynamics is very significant.

The bane of every hybrid design is weight and high speed efficiency. You are sacrificing high speed efficiency for low speed short distance improvements in efficiency. While pure electric cars are interesting, realistically speaking, how many will buy a car that needs recharging every 100 miles and costs $30,000?
Especially if they have to replace the several hundred pound battery every 5 years.

The system we are discussing here has no such limitation. Range and high speed economy are enhanced rather than sacrificed. Maintanance costs are reduced by at least 50% and the components have a 10 year life expectancy regardless of the mileage.

Basjoos can stay in lean burn on his aero civic at speeds as high as any limit presently existing in the US (or awfully close to that). His dedication to getting great mileage at high speeds is something I truly admire, and I share his belief that if you can't get on the highway and go 70 MPH, it just doesn't meet his threshold of acceptability.

The Interstate highway system was designed for speeds of 70 MPH. At that speed travelling 70 miles instead of 55, the traffic density of that same stretch of road drops to 55/70th or a 22 % reduction in traffic density. A national speed limit of 55MPH condemns us to increased traffic density and eventually would require more lanes to handle the traffic, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.

I have already covered the fact that this design requires fewer parts per vehicle which makes manufacturing small inexpensive cars more economical.
Being an older person who likes to make things more simple. I like my cars simple.

Cars shoud be built as component platforms, so you can add any accessory as a plug in option. Instead we have to choose "packages" that are assembled by the manufacturers.

This is just stupid. I don't want all the stuff that younger people consider an essential part of their vehicle. Plug in options address that issue perfectly. They also allow you to take your car in for a repair of that plug in option and leave the option at the dealership instead of the car. They can provide you with a loaner option and connect it in minutes.

It goes way back to stereos when you had several different components. If one failed you did not have to throw the whole thing away.

I also like the idea of a plug in instrument panel, that is your personal computer. Without it your car would not run, and you are making your computer do double duty.

One more point in this thread. Vehicles have become heavier as more safety features are added. This HH system would allow the vehicle to become lighter without sacrificing safety. The mass of the power train contributes to the inertia that must be absorbed in a collision. Lowering the mass that does not contribute to safety increases mileage while reducing cost. If they can build Indy cars that can survive horrible wrecks I just cant follow the argument that a huge heavy vehicle is safer.

I understand the bigger marble principle, but you also must understand that the most maneuverable cars are relatively light. Sure if you are hit head on by a car weighing twice as much as your own you loose, but if you can maneuver out of harms way you win. That fact has saved my life and my parents lives on at least one occasion for each of us.

Of course we could all drive 10 ton tanks around, but we would not be able to afford the fuel.

The point is safety enhancements are possible if you can dedicate a greater percentage of weight to safety. You can also dedicate more of the initial cost of production to safety, when you have reduced the cost of the power train.

Jammer my hair used to be fairly close to that long but I kept it short enough so it wouldn't get wound up in the wheels of a creeper! I could carry a pen around by sticking it in my beard!

regards
Mech

[gone-ot]

...ah, ha! another Bella Fleck fan(?)

[Jammer]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

...ah, ha! another Bella Fleck fan(?)

I prefer to see him play live over anything he ever recorded. He is good, and has a certain charm about him that impresses a lot of people that never would think they would get into banjo music. I wish I had his timing.

Mech: My hair is now typical of any guy my age. It's the shortest of my life, but for some reason I still seem to have that 80's thing going, it is a little longer in back, short in front, ears exposed. (My current "look" is in a photo on this site profile in a picture folder here as seen with the same banjo non-electric) I will NEVER forget the reactions I used to get with that long hair. At least half the folks I meet seemed to assumed I was in a big metal band, like "Hey maaan, do you jam?" haha Wow that sounds soooo imature to me now.

Mech cont: I think it's awesome how you can describe every little detail about your invention and have that strong passion to push forward with it. Honestly I realize your invention has so much more potential than what I did. But nevertheless I will never forget the very big dreams I used to have of the day I finally got that PERFECT TONE. Only to find out that when I did manage to do what I set out to prove that it was 30 years too late, nobody cared in the mid 90's. I firmly believe it would of went over in a very big way in the mid 1960's. Sometimes I think TIMING can make or break an inventor.

I wish you the best with your motor you invented. There is nothing like the passion an inventor shares with his/her invention, it's like a bond.

[basslover911]

Theoretically, how big of an accumulator would you say you would need in a car to keep up with a brake-recovery system?

10 gallons? 20 gallons? How much energy does it take to stop a car and how much energy can a (lets say) 10 gallon 3,000 psi accumulator contain? (since this is the most common psi rating for accumulators).

OR, would you say not even implement an accumulator?

[user removed]

Great question.

The UPS delivery vehicles use 82 gallons of hydraulic fluid and weigh 26,000 pounds gross.

That works out to 8.2 gallons for a 2600 pound car.

Now, your reference to the standard off the shelf pressure rating at 3000 PSI is another great point.

In the Americas cup racers (cost is no object) they use 12,000 PSI accumulators.

Using a GM type hydro formed frame like on the Pontiac Solstice, you could probably go to 5000 PSI, which is the figure I like, using the frame as the body of the accumulator.

Of course the 8.2 gals at 3k would be 4.9 gals at 5k or just over 2 gals at 12 k.

The EPA quote for energy density of accumulators was 50 kilowatts per kilogram. I can't remember if that was at 3 k or 5 k (I think 5). That's about 65horsepower seconds for every 2.2 pounds, and it is available virtually instantly and the life expectancy is longer than the vehicle itself.
That's 650 horsepower seconds of instant energy without any engine power added.

Basically you should size the accumulator to allow a single acceleration to about 80 MPH with no help from the engine. 10 gallons in a 2500 pound car would easily do that depending on the pressure and the full stroke displacement of your pumps.

The rate of acceleration would be astonishing, as long as you sized the accumulator and the max stroke displacement of the pumps to match the ideal traction of the tires with best friction pavement type. In other words you determine the torque required to overwhelm the traction of each tire and match that value with stroke, piston diameter, and accumulator capacity.
The weight of the components is offset by the elimination of all the drive train components you no longer need, everything from the flywheel to the wheels themselves. In may vehicles that's 25 % of the total weight of the vehicle. In some cases more.

How about a car that can beat anything from a light, since you can apply power to all 4 wheels to the limit of their traction with the ground.

In essence it takes the same amount of energy to accelerate a car at any rate of acceleration as long as the target speed is the same.

The average car stops from 60-0 in about twenty revolutions of the wheels when you stop as fast as possible. 80-0 would probably double the revolutions.

In the electric drag racer thread in this forum they did 0-110 in 10 seconds.
It took almost 20 minutes to recharge the batteries for a single pass on the drag strip.

Hydraulic hybrids can recover and reapply that energy at the same rate, and at efficiencies 3 times as good as electric regeneration.

Even if you powered a hydraulic hybrid with batteries and an electric motor, you would still be able to regenerate 3 times the energy in the same time period.

Green Car Congress had a post that stated that the electric car would still require a form of transmission to overcome the size of the electric motor issues. In other words a pure electric vehicle could use a much smaller motor with an efficient power train.

Make the electric motor replenish the accumulator and you have an electric-hydraulic hybrid, which would either extend the range or allow for a smaller battery and motor with the same range.

regards
Mech

[bbraden]

Ok, I've got lots to learn about this stuff so here's my first question:

How are you going to move the center axis of the cylinders? I think that I understand your idea fairly well. I understand that as long as the ends of all of the cylinders are alinged centrally with the total rotating "hub" (as long as the piston rods are connected to the hub) there is no mechanical advantage for the power pistons so that there is no rotation of the hub. Once you move the axis of the cylinders to one side or the other, you will create higher pressures in cylinders which move closer to the hub, which creates rotation in that direction. If you reversed the axis to the other side, it will effectively reverse the entire rotation. Is this right?

If so, how will you move the axis arm itself? Would hydraulic cylinders move it from one side to the other?

[user removed]

Originally Posted by bbraden

Ok, I've got lots to learn about this stuff so here's my first question:

How are you going to move the center axis of the cylinders? I think that I understand your idea fairly well. I understand that as long as the ends of all of the cylinders are aligned centrally with the total rotating "hub" (as long as the piston rods are connected to the hub) there is no mechanical advantage for the power pistons so that there is no rotation of the hub. Once you move the axis of the cylinders to one side or the other, you will create higher pressures in cylinders which move closer to the hub, which creates rotation in that direction. If you reversed the axis to the other side, it will effectively reverse the entire rotation. Is this right?

If so, how will you move the axis arm itself? Would hydraulic cylinders move it from one side to the other?

At the bottom of the first post in this thread are two pictures of the non functional model built 3 years ago to demonstrate the motion of the journal. The only rotating portion of the model is the outermost part, outside of the black shaded area where the four locating pins are positioned.

The original design used a shaft through an offset hole in the enlarged axle that was externally adjusted to accomplish the stroke position changes.
There are no connecting rods. The cylinders rotate around the adjustable journal while the pistons are connected to the four outer pins.

Hydraulic pressure applies force to the face of the journal and to the outer rim of the hub. Think of a wheel bolted to this assembly using the same 4 outer pin locations as the lugs for attaching the rim and tire.

The pressure applied through the hydraulic fluid has no relief when the journal is centered in the hub. Moving the journal to either side of the centered neutral position produces force on the outer pins which results in wheel rotation.

The adjustment of the journal can be accomplished by several different methods. The specifics of that operation are still a point of refinement and potential future patents. The rest of the design has been published and reviewed so any disclosure of that part of the design is not something that would affect the issuance of a patent, or future patent applications related to additional refinements.

As long as the patent is issued (within a few months), it would be difficult for another design to be patented as long as it would not be rejected as being

"obvious to someone educated in the art"

This broad stroke of rejection criteria is very difficult to work around for any competing design that used the basic configuration shown in the photos. The ultimate test of patent ability is novelty over existing designs.

The initial review has been approved as passing the novelty threshold. The second round is detail corrections in the document itself. These are things like having the same number identifying two separate components in the drawings, an error on the part of the attorney.

The initial review accepted 5 of 6 of the original claims. This is almost unheard of in patent applications involving mechanical designs since you have to have novelty over anything that existed before.

regards
Mech

edit:

I added a photo (crude rough pencil drawing) of an exploded view of the pump-motor. As you can see it has very few parts. Bearings are not illustrated in the drawing and the hub and axle are already existing on any vehicle.

[bbraden]

Ok I think that I understand your machine a little more thoroughly now. The pencil drawing helped a bunch. In my opinion, to make your hydraulic actuator work you should make your hub larger in diameter by machining out more of the "flywheel." This way you will have more room for some sort of mount on the underside of the cylinders and journal to control their position. Another benefit will be increased bearing surface which will mean stronger assemblies with longer overhaul lives.