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Camless Internal Combustion and the Digital Age (hackaday.com)
szczys writes: The internal combustion engine is amazing, and it continues to evolve. Carburetors gave way to fuel injection, and a computer now monitors all kinds of sensors to ensure these engines operate at peak efficiency. But there is one thing that has remained largely unchanged: the cam shaft. This is a device responsible for mechanically timing the operation of the cylinders. It's possible to build an engine that uses digitally controlled actuators instead of a camshaft to decide when each cylinder should fire. These exist as prototypes — we have the technology, so why aren't we building with it? The answer is that change is hard, and as with the carburetor it could take an outside force (in that case mandatory efficiency benchmarks) to get automobile manufacturers to wager a bet on new technology.
Like fuel injectors and fuel pumps?
No modern car engine will run without electricity.
But the failure of a mistimed valve is way more catastrophic than that of a misfiring injector or spark plug. Even if an electrically actuated valve system was to be used in production I'd expect it either to be supported by a backup mechanical system or to be designed never to interfere with the volume occupied by a piston. In the first case the electronic valve would be an additional cost only justified on high performance engines, in the second case it would affect the performance negatively. Perhaps this could work with sleeve valve engines?
Yeah, the idea of something smashing into something else due to a failure is what concerns me. I've already experienced what happens when a camshaft position sensor fails gradually enough that it doesn't trigger a fault in a computer...nasty ignition timing with backfires at high RPM...a Ford Taurus belching fire on the highway...and the idea of parts flying around without protection is why I don't own an interference engine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...