Well, laminar air should flow smoothly around the valve (if you can
maintain the laminar flow to the valve: a very tricky part) and once it
reaches the chamber the concave/flat backside of the valve combined with the
location of the valve in the chamber (off center) would produce serious
turbulence as the fuel is being injected into the chamber: exactly what you
want. The fuel and air is mixed in that swirling mess, compressed and ignited.
Where the laminar flow really comes in handy is going around the throttle
plates in the throttle body. With properly designed plates, the air would
essentially ignore their existance in a WOT condition, slipping past them and
using them as an accellerating venturi. In a lesser demand position you
aren't asking for 100% from the engine anyway so any kind of air works fine,
though laminar flow would still go around the plates better than chaotic air
no matter what the plate rotation condition, probably resulting in an increase
in MPG.
You don't need to redesign the valves or engine at all, just optimize the
whole setup to begin with. My personal preference would be to eliminate the
intake manifold altogether, design a custom venturi air valve for controlling
air flow to each cylinder, an O2 sensor at each exhaust output reporting
combustion efficiency back to the computer and each cylinder being totally
independent of the other, the intake venturi valve adjusting for each one
optimally at whatever level the demand is.
I can draw up the idea for the system, but it certainly wouldn't be cheap
to make...
Shaun H.
---original message---
Not sure if I followed your entire post, but it seems you would want laminar
flow from the point of entry all the way to the valves. Yes, the valves
will cause turbulence, but your main objective is to speed the flow of air
from point of entry to the valve (assuming the intake is the bottleneck and
not the valves). Only way we can fix the valve problem is either go to
larger valves (but then you lose velocity) or re-design the engine (maybe
with reed valves or rotary valves?).
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:12:35 EDT