Cyclone Power Technologies, Inc. (fka CYPW)

[bobbyknobb]

On water lubrication of Cyclone engines...

If Cyclone has made water lubrication work, then why have they not publicly demonstrated any of their engines working with water lubrication?

Why haven't we seen that expensive custom speedboat in the water being pushed around by a water-lubricated Cyclone engine?

Here's the link to the OSU presentation so everyone can read it for themselves: https://web.archive.org/web/20150923212126/http://www.cyclonepower.com/2014/IAASP_Presentation_OSU-CAR_Cyclone_March-8-2014.pdf

Page 19:
Quote:
EXAMPLE OF CRITICAL PATH ISSUE: BEARING ANALYSIS
•WHE engine uses a closed loop steam system and the exhaust steam is ported through the crankcase.
•Consequently the bearings cannot be lubricated using normal pressurized oil lubrication.
•Modelica and Solidworks have been utilized to define the range of pressure loads and dynamic loads on the bearings
•A combination of testing and additional analysis will be used to develop a robust bearing and lubrication scheme for the Gen 1 Production Engine

Page 30:
Quote:
BEARING ANALYSIS
•Little or no data exists outside Cyclone’s own experience for the use of water lubrication for either ball bearings or roller bearings in our environment and under our loadings. Calculated life using just the bearing load and the scaling factors for the viscosity of the lubricant indicate that very high ratio of load capacity to applied load is required.
•Minimal data exists for the use of water lubricated polymer journal bearings in our environment and under our loadings. Factors of a 4:1 increase in life have been shown with submerged operation, but little long term wear data is available with pressurized water lubrication.
•For long term durability, we will need to test bearings and bushings under different lubrication schemes and determine to what extent the lubrication can extend the life of the bearing. Test data will be used to complement bearing analysis and will be used to determine accelerated testing factors.

Page 32:
Quote:
TEST PROCEDURE: BEARINGS
•Initial checks
–Check all safeties work
–Check all sensors read properly
•Shakedown
–Run startup procedure
–Check basic operation and functionality
–Run shutdown procedure
•Core testing (250 hrs)
–Run extended period at expected engine loads and environment
–Repair/replace failures up to 250 hrs
–Make improvements or design changes if no bearing survives 250 hrs
•Stage 2 testing (2500 hrs)
–Assess wear and expected life (make improvements if required)
–Run extended testing to validate expected life
•Stage 3 testing (beyond 2500 hrs)
–Validate expanded operating ranges (load, speed, etc.)
–Validate any design improvements

Cyclone stopped paying the bills about then and the bearing test machine was never built.

So, what did OSU say?
1) Bearings were the "critical path", meaning they were preventing the engine from meeting its run time requirements.
2) Cyclone data showed no bearing combinations they ever tried were able to give acceptable life.
3) OSU engineers determined that the next necessary steps were to build a bearing test machine and develop new bearing designs.
4) They only got as far as planning bearing experiments and one of their steps was "–Make improvements or design changes if no bearing survives 250 hrs".

They knew of no water lubricated bearings that would survive for 250 hours (and we know from the FSDS contract that Cyclone can't make water lubricated bearings survive for 10 hours, unless, of course, its a different fatal design flaw in the Cyclone engine causing its rapid failures).

So, yes, OSU engineers concluded there were no known water lubricated bearings that would work.
Thank Buddy for this info drop.