The New AVL Medium Speed Single Cylinder Engine

For many years engine researchers and development specialists have appreciated the benefits offered by performing engine development and testing on Single Cylinder Engines (SCEs). The SCE essentially isolates the cylinder, providing a powerful tool for detailed combustion research, while mitigating the possibility of misleading data results due to cylinder-to-cylinder interactions. Single Cylinder Engines also offer increased accessibility to key components, allowing for rapid changes, thereby expediting the testing process. Furthermore, SCE testing becomes a practical necessity for large engines with bores greater than 150 mm, where a very large multi-cylinder engine installation becomes very facility limited and impractical. AVL has a long history of design and development of engines in the medium speed range. In addition to well-proven analytical techniques AVL has developed a number of Single Cylinder Engines for testing to support both internally-funded and customer-supported research programs. Since individual customer requirements for single cylinder research may vary considerably, SCEs have typically been unique builds, designed, structurally validated, machined and assembled from “the ground up.” Whilst this approach usually results in a final product which meets the customer’s needs, it is costly, extremely time consuming, prone to numerous design iterations and is often inapplicable for other engine design applications. In seeking a solution to this problem, AVL has come up with an approach which results in an SCE which is quickly, yet inexpensively developed and built. It is durable yet adaptable to specific customer requirements. AVL’s approach has been to develop a successful base engine platform for medium speed single cylinder test engines, and then modify the unit as necessary to meet customer requirements using the customer-provided power cylinder, fuel injection equipment (FIE) and other “upper end” components. This approach results in a robust, reliable, proven design at low cost, which will meet specific customer research needs for many years.