THE FREE PISTON ENGINE AS PRIME MOVER FOR CONVERTER BASED VEHICLE PROPULSION SYSTEMS

Abstract

The vehicle transmission, as a complex system, need to adapt chemical and thermal conversion processes of fuel to mechanical running conditions. Research done by the Romanian Researcher on the mechanical converter has demonstrated that it is a device that can be considered for vehicle propulsion. It is based on transferring energy using oscillations of mechanical coupled systems or hydraulic systems. Energy is provided usually using a rotational device like electrical motor or conventional internal combustion engine. It is necessary in these cases to adapt a device that converts rotational to translational movement in order to generate the necessary oscillations. To overcome these devices, the free piston principle is considered. A multi-domain model is build in order to evaluate the possibility of adapting the free piston device to generate the oscillations in both mechanical and hydraulic converter. Results and computation were done for an ATV. It was found that free piston engine allows a much compact technical solution then conventional engines, adapted to the oscillation based principle.