The Fullagar Internal Combustion Engine - Industrial & Engineering

Publication Date: October 1914. ACS Legacy Archive. Cite this:Ind. Eng. Chem. 1914, 6, 10, 862-863. Note: In lieu of an abstract, this is the article'...
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T H E J O L R L V A L O F I L V D L S T R I ~ ~A LN D E N G I i V E E R I N G C H E M I S T R Y

registration of any trade mark the proprietor whereof is a subject of any State a t war with His Majesty. The Board of Trade has set up the necessary machinery t o carry out the Act, and has issued rules from which i t appears that they may, on the application of any person, and subject to such terms and conditions, if any, as they may think fit, order the avoidance or suspension of the rights of patent and registers of trade-marks of aliens. The Board, before granting any such application, may require to be satisfied on three points. The first point of which the Board will require t o be satisfied is that the patentee, licensee, or proprietor is the subject of a State a t war with His Majesty. This point looks very simple and easy of proof, but when the time comes, i t may raise difficulties that are not apparent t o those who are not well posted as to the preparations of our enemies. The second point requiring proof is that the person applying intends to manufacture the patented article, or to carry on the patented process, or intends to manufacture the goods in respect of which trade mark is granted. We cannot say what sort of proof the Board will require on this point, but it, and the third point, are evidently intended t o prevent applications under the Act by persons who have no interest. The third point on which the Board will require to be satisfied is that it is in the general interests of the country or of a section of the community or of a trade, that such article should be manufactured, or such process carried on, or the registration of the trade mark avoided or suspended. The Act and Rules made under the new Act are to continue in force only during the continuance of the present state of war in Europe and for a period of six months thereafter. This provision raises an interesting question. Are patents, designs, and trade marks t o be avoided or suspended for not longer than six months after the termination of the war, and then to be automatically restored, or is the avoidance or suspension t o be irrevocable? Evidently the latter is not to be the case, for the Board of Trade have powers to revoke any avoidance or suspension a t any time in their absolute discretion. The matter appears to us to be in a state of confusion, and the Government has evidently found it to be so, for the President of the Board of Trade introduced a Bill into the House of Commons to amend the Patents Act they passed only a few days previously. The President in his introductory remarks explained that the new Act was not as clear as it might have been.

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have been used with more or less success for gears in machinetool construction. One machine-tool builder in the MiddleWest has tried both these alloys for gears; very unsatisfactory results were obtained, and he has gone back to ordinary carbon steel, having a carbon content of 0 . 2 0 per cent, heat-treating the steel in the most scientific manner known. The article states that with special alloy steels the limits of fluctuation in the heat treatment are much narrower than in ordinary carbon steel, and the material must be handled much more carefully if good results are to be expected. Since using carbon steel the machine-tool builder in question has found that his troubles in the way of breakage and stripping of gear-teeth are practically eliminated. THE UNITED STATES COAL OUTPUT The Iron A g e states that the coal output in the United States for the year 1913 has again broken all previous records. The figure given by our contemporary is 570,048,125 net tons, or considerably more than double the output of 1900, and more than eight times that of 1880. The value of the coal mined in 1913 is given as $760,488,785. Compared with the year 1912, the output for 1913 shows a n increase of 35,581,545 tons, or nearly 7 per cent. Pennsylvania mined more coal in 1913, both anthracite and bituminous, than in any previous year in the record of the industry. The output reached 265,306,139 tons, of which 91,524,927 tons was anthracite and 173,781,212 tons bituminous. BY-PRODUCT COKE OVENS IN RUSSIA The United States Consul a t Odessa reports that there are in South Russia ten plants owned by nine firms for the production -and utilization of coke by-products. In the first nine months of 1913 these firms were operating 887 coke ovens producing by-products, besides a large number of the old type. The increase in the last four years in these ovens was 563, or 15.8 per cent. In 1912 5,689,411 tons of coal were consumed to produce 4,252,697 tons of coke, as compared with 2,774,733 tons of coal to produce 2,020,831 tons of coke in 1903. Sulfate of ammonia is beginning to be used in Russia as a fertilizer; but most of i t is still exported. The pitch is used mainly, if not exclusively, for the production of briquettes, and the heavy oils for the impregnation of railroad sleepers.

THE IRON AND STEEL TRADE

O N ACCUMULATOR ELECTROLYTES

Manufacturers are beginning t o find that the decline in activity is not nearly so sharp as they were led to expect, though i t is entirely possible that by the time this is published, some new turn of the situation will have changed this. According to London Engineering (98, 276 August 28, 1914), while “the condition of affairs in the malleable-iron trade in the west of Scotland is most satisfactory and makers are very busy, business in the Scotch steel trade has been rather a serious problem t o the different managements for a long time back, and the newer phase is also one requiring careful handling. During the past week the outlook has improved considerably, as shipping facilities are more favorable, but heavier freights and increased costs for raw material are all against buyers, who are still somewhat backward t o fix up contracts. The mails from abroad are bringing in very satisfactory inquiries and orders from markets which have remained loyal t o the Scotch makers, and those which in recent years purchased large quantities of steel material from the Continent will now require to pass their business here or else to America.”

The July issue of the Proceedings of the Soci6tC Belge des electriciens states that most of the patents taken out in those countries where there is no preliminary examination cover reinventions, not genuine inventions. This is due to the fact that the majority of researchers explore fields which are not familiar to them and neglect to inform themselves thoroughly on all points. According t o our contemporary, this state of matters prevails in the construction of electric accumulators more than in any other branch of industry. The immobilization of the electrolyte, for example, constantly gives rise to a number of patents dealing with processes, some of which have been known for the last thirty years or more.

ALLOY-STEEL GEARS IN MACHINE TOOLS The issue of Machinery, for August of this year, says that alloy steels, such as chrome-vanadium and chrome-nickel,

T H E FULLAGAR INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE A gas engine of such novel type and combining many new features was recently demonstrated a t a joint meeting of the Institutions of Naval Engineers and Shipbuilders a t Newcastleupon-Tyne, that it is worthy of a fairly extensive description. Three fundamental factors are chiefly responsible for the difficulties in the construction of internal combustion engines of existing types. These factors are: ( a ) That the heat per unit of surface radiated by the flame to the cylinder walls increases with the size of the cylinder, while the thickness of metal through

Oct., 1914

T H E J O l ' R N A L O F I i V D U S T R I A L ALVD E L V G I Y E E R I I Y G CHEMISTRE'

which this heat has to reach the cooling water also increases; ( b ) that the weight per horse-power increases with the size of the cylinder; (c) that useless forces are called into play-useless in that they are either stationary and do no work or even produce negative work. These result from ( I ) the fluid pressure on the cylinder covers, which has to be transmitted through the framing of the engine; ( 2 ) the negative work of the compression stroke, which in single-acting engines produces a reversal of twist in the crankshaft; and (3) the inertia forces resulting from want of balance, and imperfect cushioning. The Fullagar internal combustion engine eliminates these factors, and has besides the advantages of mechanical simplicity and accessibility. The construction, which is shown diagrammatically in Figs. I and 2 , consists in using as a unit two open-ended cylinders side by side, each with two pistons, and rigidly connecting the

to the cylinders by low-pressure air-pumps, which can be driven from the engine by side levers in the ordinary way. I t will a t once be clear that with this construction useless forces are avoided or greatly reduced. There are no cylinder covers or, in fact, any high-pressure joints in the engine. There are no vertical stresses on the framing of the engine a t all. The pressure of the explosion is entirely taken between steel parts -namely, the cross-head, oblique rods, connecting-rods, and crankshaft; and only the secondary reactions of the slippers, from one-fifth to one-twentieth of the explosion forces, reach in a horizofital direction the framing of the engine. The fluid pressure in each cylinder acts a t every moment equally on the two cranks. The main bearings are thus relieved of practically all load, except for the weight of the parts which, acting vertically, is just sufficient to keep the hearings in constant thrust. The action of the explosion in driving apart the pistons -4 and B draws together, by means of the oblique rods, the pistons C and D, compressing the charge between them, so that the negative work of compression is performed, not through the crank and connecting-rods, but directly through the oblique rods, and only the net useful work is transmitted to the crankshaft. The reciprocating parts are cushioned a t each end of every stroke and the balance is perfect, practically all vibration being eliminated. In the course of a report upon tests of a demonstration engine, the results of a thirty hours trial are summarized as follows:

.4verage B . H . P. during thirty h o u r s . . . . . . 510 Power used t o drive t h e f a n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Power indicated in gas-pump, . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Friction of engine a n d gas-pump . . . . . . . 67 T o t a l (indicated H. P . ) , .

FIG. 1

FIG.2

pistons A to D, and C to B, by means of pairs of oblique rods, external to the cylinders. The action of the engine is as follows: An explosion taking place between A and B drives B down and A up, drawing up D by the oblique rods, and giving, through the two connecting-rods, two equal and opposite impulses to the two cranks. The side thrust produced by the oblique pull is, of course, taken by the crossheads of A and D, which are provided with suitable guides for the purpose. The obliquity of the rods is small, less than the maximum obliquity of the connecting-rods, so that the friction is actually less than would be the case if each piston had its own crank and connecting-rod and the mechanical efficiency of the engine is high. At the ends of their strokes the pistons uncover inlet and exhaust ports in the cylinder walls, as in the Oechelhauser arrangement. The engine works on the two-stroke cycle, and each crank receives, therefore, two impulses per revolution. Air is supplied

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NOTE ON T H E DETERMINATION O F CINEOL tion of cineol in the essential oils of eucalyptus and cajeput, based on the relative stability of the former to permanganate solution Since then some rather adverse criticisms of the method have appeared,* which, in the interest of those who may have in' T H I SJ O U R N A L , 4 , 592 ? Per? and E s s O il Record. 3, 295; 4, 348; Schimmel a n d Co.. Berichte, April, 19 13.

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The average consumption of gas per brake horse-power hour was 18.1cubic feet, and the average lower calorific value of the gas was 470 B. T. U. per cubic foot, the volume, both for the engine and the calorimeter, being measured a t the temperature and pressure of the room. This corresponds to a thermal efficiency reckoned on the brake power of just under 30 per cent. This efficiency, he says, is quite satisfactory, being nearly, if not quite, equal to that obtainable under similar conditions from any four-cycle gas-engine now on the market, and probably better than that of any twecycle engine. On account of the rather large amount of power absorbed in the air-pump in these experiments, the ratio of brake horse-power to total indicated horse-power is rather low, being not more than 80 per cent, and the efficiency reckoned on the indicated power is correspondingly high (37.6 per cent). This is due to the high piston speed, and the cylindrical form of combustion chamber, which, together with the comparatively low mean pressure, led him to expect a higher indicated efficiency than has usually been obtained in gas engines hitherto. With the better pumping arrangements proposed in the new design, which would give higher mechanical efficiency, the engine when using coal gas, or any gas with a high calorific value as in the trials now reported on, will, he adds, be exceptionally economical in fuel.

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE In a previous article' I described a method for the determina-

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Corresponding mean pressure a t 249 R. P. M. Pounds per sq. in. 50.5 4.9 1.4 6.6

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clination to try the process, perhaps call for some explanaTion. In the first place, I feel that I can'reasonably disclaim responsibility for the erraric results reported by these experimenters, because they appear to have adopted procedures of their own, using small quantities of oil and neglecting the precaution which I had recommended, namely, the checking of the purity of the cineol obtained in the assay process by the observation of its physical properties.