Search Results

The Rand Cam engine is a novel design which avoids the use of pistons in favor of a cavity of varying size and shape. A set of vanes protrudes from a rotor into a circular trough in a stator. The vanes seal to the walls and base of the trough, which is of varying depth, and progress around the trough with rotation of the rotor. These vanes therefore pass through the rotor and are constrained to move parallel to the rotational axis. Intake and exhaust processes occur through ports in the stator wall which are revealed by the passing vanes. Advantages of the basic design include an absence of valves, reduction in reciprocating masses, presence of an integral flywheel in the rotor and strong fluid movement akin a swirl induced by the relative velocity between the rotor and stator.

The Rand-Cam engine is a positive displacement machine, operating on a four stroke cycle, which consists of a rotor with multiple axial vanes forming combustion chambers as the rotor and vanes rotate in a cam shaped housing. The cam housing, consisting of two “half-housings” or stators, contains a toroidal trough of varying depth machined into each stator. The two stators are phased so that the shallowest point on one trough corresponds to the deepest on the other. A set of six vanes, able to move axially through machined holes in the rotor, traverses the troughs creating six captured zones per side. These zones vary in volume with rotor rotation. Since each trough has two deep sections and two shallow sections with ramps in between, full four stroke operation is obtained between each pair of vanes in each trough, corresponding to twelve power “strokes” per revolution.

Analysis of two types of bearings has been performed for the rotor shaft of the Rand Cam™ engine. Rolling element bearings and a combination of journal and thrust bearings for selected engine configurations have been considered. The engine configurations consist of four, five, six, seven, and eight vanes. The bearing geometry and orientation was also addressed. This analysis is crucial due to the potentially large axial loading on the bearings and the need for the bearing arrangement to be compact and reliable. An emphasis was placed on the combination of fluctuating axial and radial loads and the resulting effect upon the bearings. Tapered roller bearings were found to be effective. However, a combination of journal and thrust bearings is a more compact bearing arrangement for this application. The eight vane configuration is the most desirable configuration based upon the bearing analysis.