Somender SINGH: Squish Zone Grooves: 20%+ improved
performance of IC Engines -- 3 articles & US Patent

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**Somender SINGH**

**Squish-Zone Grooves (IC Engine)**

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![](somendersingh.jpg)

[**http://somender-singh.com**](http://somender-singh.com)

**Mr Somendar Singh**   
**Garuda R&D,**   
**Hyder Ali Road, Opp. Chamundivihar Stadium,**   
**Nazarbad, Mysore-570 010**

**email: garudarad1@rediffmail.com**

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**[N. Bhanutej: Better by Design](#1)**   
**[GoodNewsIndia.com: Somender Singh Builds a
Better IC Engine](#2)**   
**[Ch. Graeber: Obsession: Mr. Singhs Search for
the Holy Grail; Popular Science ( 24 September 2004 )](#3)**
  
[**Somender Singh:** **USP # 6,237,579 ( 29
May 2001 ) --- Design to Improve Turbulence in Combustion
Chambers**](#4usp)

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[**http://www.the-week.com/23jul06/life6.htm**](http://www.the-week.com/23jul06/life6.htm)


**Better by Design**

***Innovation: Shift your car to top gear***   
***at 20 kilometres per hour***

**by**

**N. Bhanutej/Mysore**

    Drive my Indica," says Somender Singh,
giving me the keys. The engine is noiseless and the power
exhilarating. The wheel-spinning indicates that the car is tuned
to race performance. It can go into top gear at speeds as low as
20 kilometres from where it moves to top speed in no time, even
with the air conditioner on. There is no chugging or knocking.
The fuel consumed is minimum, considering that the car can move
in top gear through congested roads.

    Singh's Indica (and his Victor motorbike)
seems to have all the characteristics one dreamed of in a single
machine thanks to his 'design to improve turbulence in
combustion chambers'. "The Indica you drove was this technology
in motion," says Singh, who has a US patent (No. 6237579) for
the design.

    The technology is the result of decades of
self-funded research in his garage (Garuda R&D) at home in
Mysore, Karnataka. A self-made engineer who was a racing legend
in the 70s and 80s, Singh has to his credit more than 1,500
flying hours in his three home-built ultralight aircraft powered
by motorcycle engines. He has spent the better part of his life
understanding engine designs and modifying them for extreme
applications.

    "Dreaming up an idea is one thing," says
Singh. "Transforming that into reality is challenging. Patenting
the idea in the US with no past experience is like scaling an
unknown peak barefoot hoping it will be named after you."
Helping him get the patent in 2001 were friends and racing
associates Joe P. Joseph and Stephan G. Matzuk.

    Singh and friends have approached market
leaders such as Ford Global Technologies and Briggs &
Stratton of the US, and Rotax Bombardier of Austria with the
design. "Most companies have long-drawn procedures, which
require you to sign a disclosure document, confidential waiver
along with an unsolicited project proposal empowering them to
test out the design without your involvement," he says. "People
are reluctant to take new ideas that come from outside the
industry and the scientific community."

    It is frustrating, especially when he has
transformed around 70 vehicles including the Ford Escort, Ikon,
Opel Astra, Cielo, Matiz, Fiat Uno and Palio, the full range of
Marutis and the older generation of automatic gear transmission
cars besides every possible Indian bike one can think of.

    Most of the manufacturers turned him down
saying that 'our products are perfected and certified, hence any
changes will require approval from our principals'. Some even
said that he would lose his warranty because he had tampered
with the engine.

    Singh says that manufacturers are secretive
about their upcoming products, "little realising that confined
nuts like me will find more ways than one to better the
performance as there is plenty of scope for improvement in
products that are produced on a mass scale".

    Today's refinements in engine, he argues,
are restricted to electronic gadgetry, sensors and systems that
support the main computer governing the engine management
systems.

    "The internals of the cylinder have not
changed much since the early overhead valve designs except for
additional valves, ports and twin igniters to improve
performance," says Singh, whose design involves changes in the
combustion chamber of the IC engines. All the air and fuel
charge is compressed into and ignited in this chamber.

    The result of this 'bang' inside the
cylinder reflects on the engine's efficiency to burn fuel. Lab
experiments show that Singh's design improves the thermal
efficiencies of the engines. It also produces noticeable
increase in torque and power along with low emissions of unburnt
hydrocarbon, carbon-monoxide, carbondioxide and nitric oxides.
"Most people in the industry and the scientific community doubt
my claims," says Singh. "I will prove them wrong."

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![](nycu2.jpg)![](squish1.jpg)

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[**http://www.goodnewsindia.com/Pages/content/newsclip/story//193\_0\_2\_0/**](http://www.goodnewsindia.com/Pages/content/newsclip/story//193_0_2_0/)  
22 Aug. 2004

**Somender Singh Builds a Better IC Engine**

The internal combustion engineor is it the 'infernal'
combustion engine, to you? isn't going to go away in a hurry.
Hate it all you want, live without it if you can, but millions
of them are burning petro fuels right now and warming up the
globe. And they are breeding faster than ever before. So, our
best chances are with taming them into better behaviour.
Somender Singh, a home-spun, hands-on tinkerer in Mysore,
Karnataka may have bred just such an animal.

When reporting technology breakthroughs, it's best to first
answer, "what was the problem?" The problem here,is accelerated
depletion of fossil fuels, emission of pollutants and climate
change due to global warming, all majorly contributed by I C
engines. Singh's invention may not stop any of these, but it
will buy our planet more time in which to come up with the magic
bullet.

We owe this story to reader John Norris who scooped this good
news from 'Popular Science' magazine, which has featured Singh's
work. It's rare for an Indian innovation or product to appear in
this 100+ year old publication. It is the equivalent of 'Nature'
magazine for technology and innovation. It is very selective
about its content. For example, over the decades it has devoted
no more than 1000 words per achievement of Burt Rutan, the
serial aeronautical innovator, the very man who recently built
and propelled SpaceShipOne into outer space. Bimbettes can
appear sooner on Time magazine covers than inventors in Popular
Science's inner pages.

In its August 21 edition, it has run a 5000 word essay on
Singh. We had better take notice. And empathise with him. The
poor man has endured enough of the humiliation of Indian
pioneersof being recognised abroad and being ignored at home.
But let's savour his achievement first.

Charles Graeber, author of the Popular Science article on
Singh, says the I C engine has scarcely changed in its essence
of a "boom that turns a crank", since Christiaan Huygens in
1673, exploded gunpowder in a chamber to push a piston down. In
the over 300 years since, all we have managed is to extract 28%
out of gasoline's 'boom' in our engines. The rest is wasted and
pushed into the atmosphere as heat and pollutants.

Somender Singh, grew up fascinated by bikes and speed. He was
forever trying to make his machines go that bit faster. He is a
tech-school drop out but a good mechanic. Singh intuited that if
one wanted to improve efficiency of engines, one has to extract
more from the fuel that goes in. Singh's solution is "a concave
bit of steel, with rough grooves scored through the four axes
like the points of a compass. It looks a bit like a homemade
ashtray."

Incorporating this design into the cylinder head of his test
engine, Singh witnessed some amazing improvements: the engine
consumed between 10 and 20% less fuel, the exhaust was
distinctly cooler and yet, the spark plug  when pulled out 
was blue-hot. Clearly, the cauldron inside was busier, but
little energy escaped it as exhaust. The Singh Chamber was
improving combustion.

Greater revelations awaited when a Singh engine powered a car.
He was "able to keep his car in fourth gear at 500 rpm without
sputtering or pinging", and "It was zippier. And in third gear I
could slow down to 20 kph with no engine knock, and just speed
up smoothly, like you would in first gear". It was as though you
didn't need a gear-box at all. Singh calls it the "Direct Drive
Engine".

Singh was awarded US Patent No 6237579 in May 2001. A greater
tribute  if imitation be deemed as such f ollowed: General
Electric came up, in two months flat, with a 'me-too' device.
After that euphoria however, Singh has been climbing steeper
mountains  of neglect and impediments that India places on her
sons.

He wrote to every conceivable person of substance. Nobody
showed any interest. He has spent money and humiliating time
trying to persuade people. Take this as an example of the laws
we have: it turns out that no government funded lab will test an
engine unless the engine builder approves. It's like saying we
may not assay Coca Cola, unless Atlanta allows.

Singh spent weeks in a bug-ridden hotel in Pune trying to get
his engine tested at Automotive Research Association of India
[ARAI]. Test showed that a Singh modified engine consumed
between 10 and 42% less fuel and ran 16 degC cooler. Yet no one
has come up to champion him. He is close to bitterness, though
recently Tata Motors has evinced some early interest.

Graeber quotes a US expert:"what Singh needs to prove his
concept is a standard, scientific A:B test, on a standard
engine, preferably something mainstream and dyno testing with a
five-gas analyzer. Then he needs to take one of his modified
cylinder heads, swap it out on the same engine, and dyno test
that. A to B. Even if the emissions don't go down a whisker, if
there's an increase in fuel economy, my god, that's a win... the
world's your oyster."

Why is it so hard for an Indian to get that test done here? The
longish Popular Science article is worth a read,for it
highlights areas that Indians must agitate against.

Here's a do-able road-map. For a start, GoodNewsIndia appeals
to a reader out there, willing to track down Somender Singh in
Mysore [Speedwell Tune Up Centre and Garuda R&D is all the
lead we have] and send his address, phone and email to be added
here. Once it's here, you can write and express your
appreciation. Next, you can button-hole your favourite
politician, industrialist or bureaucrat, post in message boards
and newsgroups. Maybe some doors will open for this man.

India has many tinkerers in the great Yankee tradition Many are
unlettered and unaware of the roads they must take to realise
their potential. Singh would be a role-model if he succeeds. He
must therefore, get his hearing.

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***Popular Science* ( 24 September 2004 )**   
[**http://www.popsci.com/popsci/futurecar/19b09aa138b84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html**](http://www.popsci.com/popsci/futurecar/19b09aa138b84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html)


**Obsession: Mr. Singhs Search for the Holy
Grail**

*American visionaries, cranks and con men have long sought
the simple key to boosting the efficiency of the gasoline
engine. Now a barefoot tinkerer in India believes he has
unlocked the door. Is he for real?*

by

**Charles Graeber**

India is booming. The expanding population has overwhelmed the
Bangalore-Mysore road the way a river floods its banks, and the
flow of two-way traffic is choked with a living history of human
transportation. There are belching herds of diesel trucks,
diesel buses and iron-framed diesel tractors. There are
wooden-wheeled carts pulled by brightly painted Brahma bulls,
and two-stroke-motor rickshaws fueled by kerosene or cooking oil
or whatever else is flammable and cheap. There are mopeds and
bipeds and bicycles and motorcycles, and every conceivable type
of petrol-powered, internally combusting automobile, from
doddering Ambassador cabs to gleaming 16-valve Mercedes
miracles. But theres only one car like the one Somender Singh
and I are riding in right now.

Thats because Singh invented it. Or rather, reinvented a piece
of it: a small detail on the engine that he calls direct
drive. He claims that his invention makes an engine cleaner,
quieter and colder than its internal-combustion cousins around
the world  while using up to 20 percent less gas.

Some people say to me, Singh, why are you wasting your time
on such a thing? he yells, his singsong Indian English barely
piping above the tooting traffic. But I tell you sirI tell the
world: I have conquered the internal combustion engine!

To hear Singh tell it, his story has all the makings of a
Bollywood movie, a classic heartwarmer about a small-fry Indian
grease monkey who challenges the big boys armed only with a
dream and a dirty wrench. And theres no doubt that he has come
up with something new, at least in the eyes of the U.S. Patent
Office. But has a potbellied philosopher- mechanic from Mysore
really discovered the efficiency El Dorado sought by every auto
manufacturer, R&D center and thermal engineer from Detroit
to Darmstadt?

Well, maybe. So far, all Singhs invention has earned him is a
few polite rejection letters from presidents, professors and
auto manufacturers  while costing him tens of thousands of
borrowed rupees and an untold number of sleepless nights. His
eyes are glazed with the heat of an idea he can neither sell nor
surrender. Mostly, he seems to have discovered the hard way that
in 2004, it takes more than a patent and personal conviction to
reinvent the automobile.

Even though Mysore is only a few hours south of the Indian IT
epicenter of Bangalore, most of its 700,000 inhabitants lead
traditional lives seemingly untouched by technology. The poor
still work the fields and factories as they have for centuries,
weaving silk or hand-rolling sandalwood incense; the last raja
still lives in a whitewashed fairy-tale palace framed in stained
glass and 97,000 lightbulbs. And every fall rich and poor alike
make their pilgrimage up Chamundi Hill to pray to the mountain
goddess who has watched over their tile-roofed city since time
began. This is a place of yoga and vegetarian food, of barefoot
men swathed in traditional white longhis and women draped
elegantly in colorful saris.

In such a place, Somender Singh has long been an eccentric  a
blue-jeans rock-n-roller, a leather-jacketed motorcycle race
champion and homegrown Evel Knievel, an autodidactic birdman who
soars above the palaces and red clay roofs in Mysores first and
only motorized hang glider. Like most Indians, he is a reverent
man; he prays to the mountain goddess for strength and wears a
green ring from his guru to cool his fiery heart. But unlike
most Indians, he also worships at the altar of the speed demon.

Singh has craved it for as long as he can remember: real
bad-ass, teeth-gritting speed. And when, at age 10, a cricket
ball to the eye destroyed his chances of following his father
into the air force, Singh was destined to find that speed on the
ground. So in 1968, following the time-honored tradition, he
dropped engineering college for the old-school curriculum of
trial and error and the dog-eared hot-rod canon of J.E.G.
Harwoods Speed and How to Obtain It and Gordon Jenningss
Two-Stroke Tuners Handbook. He bought a motorcycle and then
dedicated his health to racing it. When the sponsors wouldnt
touch him, he started his own team and called it Speedwell  and
it did, winning more than 120 trophies for him as a racer in
national and international events, and some 400 more for the
machines he tuned.

Winning made Singh a local celebrity, to the point that when
the first movie musicals were being made in the local Kannada
language, the producers tapped him for typecast guest
appearancesfirst as a pompadoured rocker strumming an electric
guitar to Elviss Hound Dog, then as a daredevil motorcycle
stuntman jumping stairs and cars. When a 1986 cycling accident
left him with a broken shoulder and collarbone, Singh traded his
helmet for a wrench and hung out his shingle as a mechanic. Now
if you own a performance vehicle and are passing within a days
drive of Mysore, Singhs garage is a pilgrimage site of its own.

To get there, simply follow the Mysore road to a small sign
announcing the headquarters of Speedwell Tune Up Centre and
Garuda R&D. Beyond the sign youll find a little metal gate
and a 50-foot yard containing a few cars, more motorcycles and
the familiar open darkness of a working mechanics garage.
Singhs workshop doubles as the family home he shares with his
wife and 10-year-old daughter. Out front, sleeping dogs and
rusting car chassis lie in the shade of a rain tree. His
assistants  four kids, their hair in modified d.a.s, wearing
rolled dungareespeer into the mystery revealed beneath an open
hood.

Singhs office is in the back, separated from the greasy piles
of engines and parts by a beige shower curtain. On the walls,
competing for space between the pictures of Christian saints and
Hindu gods and the standard mechanics warnings against urgent
jobs and requested credit, are yellowed clippings celebrating
Singhs earlier life of speed. Singh Takes the Day, one reads,
and 5,000cc Man Machine. The grainy photocopies show a man who
seems a lifetime younger, his eyes black and staring, his rugged
mug framed with thick black hair. Below the photos, and a
menacing poster of two jets about to collide in midair, is a
sign bearing Singhs motto: We specialize in work which few
understand. And this has been my problem sir, Singh says with
a shrug. He settles in behind a metal desk heaped with paper and
parts. It has been my problem ever since I started this whole
business of whatever I started doing in my life.

Its On this desk, somewhere Under the tools and parts and the
notebooks crammed with letters and diagrams, that youll find a
concave bit of steel, with rough grooves scored through the four
axes like the points of a compass. It looks a bit like a
homemade ashtray. In fact, it is Singhs problem  his
invention. Even as a prototype, its high-concept but
exceptionally low-tech, the sort of thing you might be able to
make in your own garage with a steady hand and a Dremel tool.
Which is, essentially, what Singh did.

I am no great genius man, no man with letters after his name
or fancy institutions, and what I have invented is really very
simple, he admits, as he pushes aside the clutter to reveal a
childs chalkboard. But to understand even so simple a concept,
you first must have a basic understanding of the forces at work
within the combustion cylinder, the concept of turbulence and
combustion which define the engine.

Singh takes the chalk and draws a rectangle with a domed top: a
combustion chamber and the cylinder head, the ashtray-like piece
of metal he has modified. Then he draws a diagonal line across
the edge of that dome, then another, representing the grooves he
has carved  his invention. The grooves are supposed to better
mix the air and fuel inside the chamber. Singh is convinced that
it makes combustion more efficient.

If a childs chalkboard seems an overly basic tool for
explaining a new engineering concept, remember that the internal
combustion engine is itself hardly rocket science. Its
fundamental conceita boom in a closed chamber, a zoom
translated through piston, rod and crank  has remained pretty
much unchanged since 1673, when the Dutch physicist Christiaan
Huygens designed a brilliant, nonfunctional, closed-cylinder,
piston-driven engine that ran on gunpowder. The functional,
liquid-fueled version of that invention  the internal
combustion engine (ICE)  has been with us for about 200 years,
over which time it has transformed itself from Swiss engineer
Francois Isaac de Rivazs wonky four-wheeled hydrogen
thingamabob (1807) to the fairly familiar gas-fuel innovations
of Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler (late 1880s) and then wrapped
under the familiar body shapes of Henry Ford (early 1900s).

Since then, gas has risen in octane, and the carburetor has
been invented and largely discontinued. Engine emphasis has
shifted from deep power to muscle to fuel economy and back,
engineers have realized that compression is a key to maximizing
thermal efficiency, and inventing the automobile has grown from
an amateurs obsession to a multinational juggernaut. But all of
that is really just window dressing. The basic conceptthe boom
that turns a crankhas not really changed at all. And one of the
physical fundamentals of that basic concept is turbulence.

Turbulence is the chaotic movement of fuel and air through the
ICEs combustion chamberthe swirl and tumble that makes
hydrocarbons and oxygen combine fast and furiously in an
efficient engine. Compressed fuel stagnates and separates and
burns inefficiently, if at all  imagine trying to burn a phone
book without fanning the pages. Turbulence mixes it up, fans
those pages. Its what allows modern high-compression engines to
go boom.

A hundred years ago, turbulence was to automotive engineers
what chaos is to the Old Testament: a raw randomness ungoverned
by words or math, an unordered whirlwind of particles as
inexpressible to engineers as angels dancing on the head of a
pin were uncountable to Sir Thomas More. Then came a Cambridge
don named Harry Ricardo.

Like Singh, Sir Harry was a bit of an eccentric and was
obsessed with motorcyclesthough back in 1906, Ricardo was
forced to create his own bike, by equipping his velocipede with
a steam-powered engine fueled by coal fed from his own bulging
pockets. As a proto?grease monkey, Ricardo intuitively
recognized that air and fuel burn best when mixed. He then
became the first to test the notion in the lab, measuring burn
rates against the speed of a fan. The faster the fan, the better
the burn; Ricardo had found the key to the boom.

Modern automotive engineers want turbulence, and they can
describe it, just as modern mathematicians can describe chaos.
What you want are swirling eddies of air and fuel mix, each
variegated into smaller sub-eddies, and so on, down to
individual molecules. Imagine it as a cascading Mandelbrot set
of air and fuel inside the chamber. Then theres a spark, and
the whole thing goes off like a daisy chain of fire, a giant
fractal fuse.

Engineers have devised all manner of technologies to create
this particular form of chaos in their combustion chambers, from
ornately angulated fuel injectors and domed cylinder heads to
swirl-and-tumble-inducing atomizers. But 100 years ago, Ricardo
found a far easier way to make the air-fuel mix in an ICE more
turbulent. He built a combustion chamber that was domed in the
middle and tapered on the edges, like a derby hat, so that the
edges of the rising piston would come very close to the angled
edges of the cylinder head. The piston goes up, and the fuel
along the edges squirts into the center, to mix and swirl near
the spark plug. Imagine pinching the edges of a jelly doughnut.
He called this concept quench. Today we call it squish.

Squish! A laughably simple idea with a laughable name, but now
almost every one of the billions of internal combustion engines
operating around the planet employ some version of itincluding
virtually every engine Singh ever straddled in his 30 years in
motorsports.

Singh knew that to get his precious speed he had to fire the
heart of the engine, the center of its mystery: the combustion
chamber. It was here that fuel was turned to bang  and here
that the efficiency of that bang had stalled out at around 28
percent. The vast majority of the fuel was dissipated as engine
heat or exhaust.

In the history of automobiles, manufacturers had experimented
with all sorts of shapes and valve arrangements to improve
efficiency, but nobody had ever dramatically altered the surface
of the chamber itselfperhaps, Singh reasoned, because engineers
couldnt see inside its metal walls and eyeball its forces. The
combustion chamber was a mystery shrouded in plate steel. The
very soul of the engine appeared ripe for improvement.

From the beginning of time, whatever I did was geared toward
taking an engine, polishing the rough edges out of it, and
getting some more performance from it, Singh remembers. And I
certainly knew that it was not God who was manufacturing these
engines in a factory. It was just human beings, men set on a
time frame, assembling parts. So there is, then, great room to
improve.

Singh needed his engines to work as efficiently as possiblehe
wanted the fuel to burn cleanly and under the maximum
compression. But like most tuners, he had run up against
compressions upper limit, above which pockets of unburned fuel
explode spontaneously, or knock, under the pressure. He knew
that the flame front from the spark plugs wasnt reaching all
the fuel at the edges of the cylinders.

One way to fight knock is with high-octane gasoline, which
racers in countries like India have no access to. If Singh
wanted more compression, hed have to decipher the problem his
way. So he started imagining: My whole thing was, how on earth
could one do something to mix it better?

The simplest answer was Ricardos squish, which Singh, like
many tuners before him, maximized into a sort of supersquish by
making the rising piston head come as close as possible to the
squish band. But the knock just got worse; either the chaos of
the supersquish turbulence was too much, or the exploding
hydrocarbons he was hearing were trapped inside the squish band,
isolated from the spreading flame at the point farthest from the
spark plug. The compression was stagnating his air-fuel mix. He
needed to stir it up, to make that eddied, fractal fuse between
the edge of the squish band and the center of the spark.

And so, armed with this intuition and a toolbox, Singh
scratched his own small mark on Ricardos 100-year-old concept 
through the squish band from the cylinder edge to the spark
plug. Then he scratched another, and another. The first channels
were shallow, and they quickly filled with hydrocarbons.
Tentatively, he made them deeper. We were very scared, Singh
confesses, and as he says it he sets down his nub of chalk in
favor of a Gold Flake cigarette. Maybe we were actually putting
an induced crack into the head.

But the engine didnt crack. It changed. The compression went
up, but the engine noise went down. And it seemed to be using
less fuel: Measuring with a drip syringe and a stopwatch, Singh
determined that it was between 10 and 20 percent less. Most
definitely and immediately, sir, something was very different,
he says. My combustion was so stable that I could bring the
idling down to such a point that you could actually count the
blades on the fan as it turned.

He felt the exhaust with his bare hand and noticed that it was
running cooler. Yet when he removed the spark plug, he
discovered that it had become blue, apparently from intense
combustion-chamber heat. And when he ran his finger along the
inside of the exhaust pipe, he noticed something else, or a lack
of it: unburned hydrocarbons. His engine seemed to be running
cleaner. In automotive terms, his squish-band channels seemed to
have maximized combustion by propagating the laminar flame front
from the spark plug to the edges of the cylinder at its top
dead-center position, converting more fuel to expanding gases
and piston work while avoiding the spontaneous combustion of
unburned hydrocarbon emissions. In laymans terms, they boomed
better.

So much better, in fact, that he was able to keep his car in
fourth gear at 500 rpms without sputtering or pinging, even
while navigating the local congestion of bullock carts,
rickshaws, bikes and cars. His engine ran so slow that it nearly
didnt need the gearing of a transmission  thus, direct
drive.

He modified a motorcycle, then a two-stroke, then a
four-stroke, then a car, then 50 cars. Finally he borrowed money
from his mother-in-law and bought a spanking-new Tata Indica in
which to showcase his design. He decorated it with direct
drive in stick-on letters on the steering wheel and a bulls
head above the grill. Then he tested his idea on a few
customers, including N. Bhanutej, a writer for a national weekly
news magazine who owns a pokey 1.2-liter Fiat Palio.

Essentially, the whole car changed, Bhanutej recounts. It
was zippier. And in third gear I could slow down to 20 kph with
no engine knock, then press the petrol and just speed up
smoothly, like you would in first gear. He also found that his
modified engine was strangely quiet. At the stops, I sometimes
needed to peek at the dashboard to make sure it was still
running. It seemed like a different car. The mechanic at
Bhanutej s Fiat dealership thought so too. He told me it was
impossible for this type of car to perform this well, Bhanutej
says. He kept asking about fuel additives.

Singh seemed to be onto something. Although he couldnt prove
scientifically that it worked, he felt sure that it did.
Certainly, it was novel  Singh applied for a patent in January
1999, and the U.S. Patent Office issued him No. 6237579 in May
2001. Two months after his application hit the patent office Web
site, engineers from General Electric applied for a nearly
identical patent for an aftermarket design, which they claimed,
as Singh had, would result in increased turbulence, and thus
better fuel efficiency, with fewer emissions.

Its very interesting, I think, that General Electric
developed this idea after my patent became public, Singh says
with a smile. But their design is very stupid. An add-on will
never survive the intense forces of the combustion chamber. If I
had come up with this idea, I would have been too embarrassed to
tell anybody about it, let alone apply for the patent.

This roadside mechanic in Mysore had seemingly beaten a
billion-dollar R&D department. But what had he actually
invented? Did it really work? Singh had his patent and his
prototype. Now all that remained was to introduce his invention
to the world.

Ford Global Technologies generates most ideas internally,
employing 1,200 innovators  an alphabet soup of Bachelors and
Masters and Ph.D.s from more than 60 countries, who file around
500 patents a year from gleaming Death Star?size facilities such
as the Scientific Research Laboratory in Dearborn, Michigan, and
the Forschungszentrum in Aachen, Germany. Outsiders like Singh
are encouraged to submit through the Web site, and every year,
5,000 ideas pour in from inventors, academics, mechanics,
customers and even children.

But of course, submitting with the masses was not Singhs
style. After all, he had conquered the internal combustion
engine; he didnt want to just click through a legal waiver and
throw his lifes work, his lottery ticket, into a virtual
wishing well, with no promise of return. Instead he wrote
directly to the company president, and he did it by mail, with
stamps and a typed letter and his standard spark plug
photograph. He wanted to be recognized, singled out, and ushered
through the front door. When he found himself repeatedly
referred to the public portal, Singh simply took his business
elsewhere.

Mostly, Singh spent his hope and energy writing to scientists.
Surely, he thought, engineers would understand the significance
of his idea! Or at least offer insight to what was happening
inside his scratched cylinders. Singh writes the way he thinks,
and his letters were excitable, florid documents in which his
theories on combustion, turbulence and the environment were
drawn in multiple colors and emphasized with triple interrobangs
and exclamation marks.

The scientists replies were more compact. He claimed to have
conquered the internal combustion engine? Using poor fuel on
engines of antiquated design, evaluated without scientific
instruments and in third-world conditions? Had he tested the
design for 500,000 miles, they wondered, as a proper R&D lab
would? He hadnt  none of his modified engines had done more
than 65,000 road miles. Had he tested it on non-Indian vehicles
or with the kinds of fuel used in the developed world? (He
hadnt.) Had he put it on a proper dynamometer, tested
horsepower and torque? (No, but theres a reason....) Could he
send them an official printout from a five-gas analyzer
indicating the oxides of nitrogen and carbon and the unburned
hydrocarbons and total fuel economy? In a word, no.

It was possible that Singhs invention was useful for the
inefficient engines and poor-grade gasoline that crowd the
Bangalore-Mysore road  but of course, any modern modification
would improve on those ICE dinosaurs. So how, the scientists
asked, did he know that his modification really did anything?
Singh explained about the quiet and the low rpms, the blue spark
plugs and clean tailpipes. What more proof do we need? hed
ask. What more does the world need?

As the scientists had made clear, what the world needed was
proof of concept, in the form of hard, numerical data. But in
Singhs India, getting numbers is not as easy as you might
imagine. First theres the price: The most basic dyno test costs
25,000 rupees, or about $550, plus the cost of the engines,
parts, assistants and fuel. Thats real money to amateurs
anywhere; in India, where the average person earns around $250 a
year, its real close to impossible.

Even if you can manage the money, testing in India is a
difficult proposition. Singh repeatedly beseeched Mico-Bosch, a
Bangalore subsidiary of the German dyno-testing giant, to let
him pay for an afternoons test, and was just as repeatedly
blown off. As he quickly learned, there are only three
government-authorized dyno-testing facilities in all of India,
each used almost exclusively for manufacturers. An amateur
inventor here  even one with 25,000 rupees in his pocketcant
just walk in off the street and test any old engine he likes, at
least not without the written permission of the engines
manufacturer.

I imagined that these great men would say, 'OK, let us get
down to the bloody bottom line! Let us see about what on earth
can be happening! Singh says. Or perhaps, at the very least,
be willing to take my money.

The rule requiring manufacturer consent is apparently an effort
to prevent individuals from disputing the official data on
horsepower and emissions, as published by importers,
manufacturers and the Indian government. They dont want any
Ralph Naders popping up here, Singh explains weakly.

In November 2002 Singh actually received one such permission
from a manufacturer to test his modification on its engines. The
manufacturer was Briggs and Stratton, and the engines were two
149cc side valves. Singh borrowed $3,000 and drove the 500 miles
to the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) test
facilities in Pune, but day after day, his test was delayed. He
waited in a cheap hotel for two weeks, pacing, smoking, burning
money. It was a very frustrating experience, Singh says,
wringing the tension from his graying temples with permanently
grease-stained fingers. Sometimes it was like a bloody test of
will.

Finally he was allowed to bring his engines and hook them to a
Benz EC-70 dynamometer with a five-gas analyzer and a Benz
gravimetric fuel-measuring device. A week later, he got his
results. According to ARAI, at between 2,000 and 2,800 rpm,
Singhs modified engine used between 10 and 42 percent less fuel
than its unmodified twin, with no appreciable losses in torque
or power. And, as he suspected, it ran cooler tooas much as
16 degC cooler.

This, it would seem, represented success on a massive scale.
With record-high gas prices at the pump and intimations of
global warming encroaching on the front page, the worlds auto
manufacturers are investigating every option to simultaneously
comply with federally mandated fuel-economy standards yet
continue to feed the market for ever larger vehicles. This
spring GM and Ford announced a joint investment of $1 billion to
develop their own version of a six-gear automatic transmission
already popular in Europe, to achieve perhaps a 4 percent
increase in fuel economy. Singhs invention, in contrast,
offered five times that fuel savings.

Unfortunately for Singh, Briggs and Stratton wasnt interested
in fuel economy  it wanted better emissions. And according to
the test, Singhs modification made emissions slightly worse.
Things looked dire: Singh had lost his only sponsor and blown
his money on a test that was essentially useless.

The problem is, its a side valve, explains Steve Weiner, a
35-year Porsche race-tuning veteran and the owner of Rennsport
Systems in Portland, Oregon. Nobodys been using those things
in our world since the 1950s. Not even on lawn mowers. Theyre
hugely inefficient and dirty.

According to Weiner, what Singh needs to prove his concept is a
standard, scientific A:B test, on a standard engine, preferably
something mainstream  a high-efficiency shitbox even  and dyno
testing with a five-gas analyzer. Then he needs to take one of
his modified cylinder heads, swap it out on the same engine, and
dyno test that. A to B. Even if the emissions dont go down a
whisker, if theres an increase in fuel economymy god, thats a
win. If you can even find that, the worlds your oyster. Whether
its valid in the U.S. or not.

In short, what Singh needs to prove his ideas to the world is a
test he can neither afford nor gain access to. Its a simple
fact, simple enough to diagram on a childs chalkboard, and its
driven him to the point of mania. He screws the green ring round
and round his finger, then grabs himself by the face. This
bloody country, Singh spits. We have millions of dollars and
millions of people for puja [a Hindu festival], but when one
bloody inventor wants to get a simple engine tested . . .

Singh lets his sentence trail off into the stagnant heat of the
empty garage. He sits, face in his hands, his elbows resting on
patents and rejection letters. Five years ago, Singh was a local
celebrity with a young family and the world by the tail. Now he
just looks exhausted. He has written to everyone he can think
of, he has prayed to every god who might take an interest in his
cause. What he needs at the moment is a miracle.

In the movie version of Somender Singhs life, the phone rings.
Its a major auto manufacturer. Theyve gotten one of his
letters, reviewed the patent, and theyre ready to deal. Singhs
idea gets tested in a world-class lab filled with computers and
blinking lights; men in white coats look at their clipboards in
disbelief, and Singh is handed a laurel of genius and a
Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes? size check for his
squish-band scratch. As the credits roll, Singh loads his wife
and daughter, Beverly Hillbillies?style, into his tiny
direct-drive prototype and motors  efficiently, quietly, coolly
 to a grand mansion with a gold-plated garage. The world is
just and good. Its hankie time. Lights up.

In real life, Singh and I just sit there in the stifling heat
of his little office. Flies turn lazy circles beneath the
lifeless fans. The dog crosses the driveway to find a new cool
spot on the garage floor. The next day its the same. And the
next, and the next.

And then one day, the phone rings. Its Tata Motors. The
$3.5-billion Indian auto manufacturer, which supplies
automobiles to Rover UK, has received one of his letters. The
Tata engineers have seen his patent and examined the photograph
of his spark plugs. And theyre interested. If hes willing to
sign a five-year nondisclosure agreement, theyll test his
design further in their lab in Pune  on a proper dynamometer,
with permission and everything.

There are no promises of checks or mansions. But for the first
time in his life, Singhs dreams might be sponsored. His
squish-band scratch might be good or not, it might improve gas
mileage or not, it might save the planet or increase emissions
and crack the cylinder heads. But at least now hell know for
sure. Everyone will. Singh is getting his chance.

Another man might start dancing on that pile of rejection
letters, or roar off into the sunset on a modified squish-band
motorcycle. But Singh has been riding the ups and downs of this
plot for years, and hes too careful or too superstitious to
jinx himself with conspicuous joy. So he just places the phone
carefully back in its cradle and sits there, staring ahead. He
reaches for a cigarette.

You have to understand, I have been working at this for such a
very long time, he says finally. Honestly, I am no longer
certain whether it is possible for me to be happy. He stands,
and walks past the piles of parts and papers, to his
hand-me-down computer. But I tell you this, he says. At least
now we can perhaps tell those 'No, no buggers out there that
Mr. Singh is not completely off his rocker!

Then he sits down.

---

  

**US Patent # 6,237,579**

**( 29 May 2001 )**

**Design to Improve Turbulence in Combustion
Chambers**

**Somender SINGH**

**Abstract ---** A combustion chamber design layout of
grooves or channels or passages formed in the squish band to
further enhance turbulence in the charge prior to ignition as
compared to existing designs with squish bands or hemispherical
layouts in I.C. Engines. These grooves or channels or passages
after ignition direct the flame front to cause multipoint
ignition during the combustion cycle resulting in the following
distinct advantages over existing designs in practice. First,
quicker and complete clean burn combustion; second, lower
operating temperatures due to the higher flame velocities;
third, enhanced torque and power through the entire range
resulting in better fuel economy with lower Emissions; and
fourth, smoother engine operation through the entire range
enhancing engine life.

US Cl. 123/661; 123/193.5   
Intl. Cl. F02B 19/12 (20060101); F02B 19/00 (20060101)

**References Cited:**   
**U.S. Patent Documents**   
4280459 ( July 1981 ), Nakanishi et al.   
5065715 ( November 1991 ) Evans   
5103784 ( April 1992 ) Evans   
6047592 ( April 2000 ), Wirth, et al.

**Foreign Patent Documents**   
DE 2741121   
DE 27410121   
JP 175225

***Description***

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to improvements in combustion by
enhancing the turbulence and multipoint ignition in two- and
four-cycle internal combustion (I.C.) engines.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

In normally aspirated two and four cycle I.C. engines the basic
combustion process is as follows. The air-fuel mixture is drawn
into the engine through the carburetor due to the low pressure
created by the ascending or descending piston depending on two
and four cycle. The controlled air-fuel mixture is then
compressed by the rising piston in the cylinder to a desirable
compression ratio determined by the fuel. The compressed gases
are ignited through a spark plug located in the cylinder head
before top dead center (TDC) resulting in a sharp increase in
temperature and pressure inside the combustion chamber. The
expanding gases push the piston down which in turn gets the
crank rolling and storing the energy in a flywheel to do useful
work.

Ultimately, the flame velocity and degree of combustion have a
direct bearing on the a) power output, b) efficiency of engine,
c) fuel consumption, d) emission, e) operating temperature, f)
sound and vibration levels and g) reliability. The flame
velocity and degree of combustion are directly related to the
state of turbulence in the charge prior to ignition.

In existing combustion chambers designs in I.C. engines, the
combustion chamber is the enclosed space within the cylinder,
the cylinder-head and above the piston where burning of charge
occurs. The combustion chambers play a vital role in engine
characteristics. Since the inception of the I.C. engine, a lot
of research and development has been carried out to perfect the
combustion chamber to achieve maximum engine efficiency and
reliability. The trend in combustion chamber design has been to
direct the expanding forces caused due to combustion towards the
piston crown and to avoid the dissipation of these forces in the
direction that do not produce power.

Two stroke combustion chambers, due to their relatively simple
layouts, have evolved and revolved around hemispherical layouts
with a center or offset spark plug location since their
inception. Four stroke combustion chambers of the early types
featured side valves layouts with their large volume low
compression cylinder heads prone to detonation and low power
outputs.

The most notable research on combustion chambers in the early
days was done by Sir Harry Recardo, who enlightened the world
about the causes of Detonation and Pinging. Recardo discovered
Pinging and Detonation arose through uncontrolled instantaneous
combustion occurring in pockets of fuel in the extreme ends of
the combustion chamber due to the extreme heat and pressure
build up. Ricardo's solution was to concentrate the greater part
of the clearance volume over the side valves layout and reducing
greatly the clearance between the larger part of the combustion
chamber which extended over the piston crown. In the Ricardo
layout, the space between the piston and the cylinder head was
so small and the surface so cool in relation to the combustion
temperatures that the gases trapped in this "Quenched" area did
not detonate in the combustion cycle under load. This was an
improvement over other combustion chambers. Later over-head
valve (O.H.V) layouts gained popularity due to several
advantages and attained higher power outputs and sustained
reliability. The shape and sizes of four stroke combustion
chambers with their overhead valves layouts went through many
design changes over the years.

The four stroke combustion chamber layouts evolved through the
plain cylindrical form with the required clearance volume, the
bath tub type, the wedged shape type, and the hemispherical
cross flow type. The hemispherical combustion chamber or
hemi-head provides room to accommodate larger valves increasing
volumetric efficiency and permits centrally located spark plug
which contribute to more efficient combustion, better heat
dissipation and higher thermal efficiency.

The concept of a portion of the combustion chamber at close
proximities to the piston crown at TDC came to be known as
"squish" area or "squish" band earlier referred to as quenched
area. In principle, the trapped charge between the piston crown
and the squish area nearing TDC starts to be injected towards
the main scoop of the combustion chamber causing turbulence
prior to ignition greatly reducing detonation and pinging.
Higher compression ratios are possible with squish bands
resulting in improved engine efficiencies. Turbulence in the
charge is also caused by inlet ports, their shapes, angles and
surface finish. They greatly help to keep the air-fuel mixture
bonded and in a homogeneous state at the point of entry only.
Multipoint fuel injection basically achieves very fine break ups
of fuel particles prior to entry on the intake stroke and
achieves better combustion due to the ideal state of the charge.

Two stroke engines have lesser volumetric efficiency due to the
obstruction in the ports and short time/area available in the
intake and transfer phase. Due to the size, shape and angles of
the ports the charge is in a higher state of turbulence entering
the cylinder than four strokes and requires far lesser ignition
advance to operate efficiency irrespective to combustion chamber
design. Four strokes require higher degree of ignition advance
and assisted by vacuum advance to operate efficiently due to the
lower state of turbulence and a denser charge before combustion.
The turbulence inside the cylinder and head mainly helps to
maintain the air-fuel mixture in a gaseous state and prevent
condensation of fuel droplets preventing erratic and incomplete
combustion. In recent times the most accepted practice to create
turbulence is to provide squish bands in the combustion chamber.

The squish area are normally placed in the outer circumference
of the combustion chamber and are machined smooth. The squish
area could be a band or a tapered area or two bands on opposite
sides. The squish area are either flat or angled depending on
the profile of the piston crown. They are machined smooth to a
high degree of finish and set up in design with a close
tolerance between combustion chamber and piston at TDC
preventing contact.

In principle, the piston on the upward stroke causes the
compression to progressively increase. Nearing TDC, the gases
around the squish band and the piston crown are pushed towards
the center scoop causing Turbulence which in turn improve flame
propagation as ignition has occurred before TDC and greatly
reduces Pinging and Detonation. Thus, present day two stroke
combustion chambers are hemispherical or the "top hat" type with
a circular or partial squish band and are machined smooth with
no sharp edges. The spark plugs are located centrally or offset
depending on the requirement. They are made of alloys of
aluminum of high conductivity and, in certain cases, are water
cooled.

Present day four stroke combustion chambers house the inlet and
exhaust valves. Multiple valve layouts are standard feature in
high performance design. Partial or circular squish bands are
provided and are finished smooth to a high degree with no sharp
edges. The spark plug is location depends on design and
availability of space. In the case of aircraft engines, twin
plugs are mandatory. Cylinder heads are largely made of alloys
of aluminum having steel inserts for valve seats and water
cooled in most cases. Basic designs typically are bath tub,
wedged or double wedged with a flat roof or hemispherical cross
flow type with inclined valve layouts.

Over the last 60 years standard practice is to have a squish
area of 20% to 40% or more of the combustion chamber area either
concentric or offset to the cylinder axis at close proximities
of the piston crown, causing turbulence in two stroke engines.
Depending on the number of valves and layouts, four stroke
combustion chambers are machined to provide the squish area
resulting in a puff of mixture pushed towards the spark plug
causing turbulence resulting in better combustion.

In either case the surface of the combustion chamber, squish
bands and the piston crown are normally machined smooth with a
high degree of finish with the right tolerance to prevent
contact at TDC on existing two and four cycle engines in
production.

Compared to diesel engines (with their higher efficiencies),
the present day combustion chamber layouts in two and four cycle
petrol (gasoline) engines include the following design defects
and limitations. First, diesel engines operate at higher
efficiencies due to the turbulence caused by direct diesel
injection into the combustion chamber before TDC. Second, the
diesel also burns more completely due to the turbulence created
by the high pressure spray resulting in lesser emissions and
unburnt fuel. Third, the diesel has higher resistance to flash
point due to its composition and hence can withstand much higher
compression ratios than petrol or kerosene. Fourth, the petrol
and kerosene engines have a threshold on compression ratios due
to its properties and lower flash points compared to diesel.
Fifth, the petrol and kerosene need to be atomized with air to
form a homogenous mixture before it is drawn into the cylinder,
as compared to the diesel which is injected prior to ignition
directly into the combustion chambers. Sixth, as compression is
applied the air-fuel mixture tends to get unstable and starts to
separate and condense causing erratic and incomplete combustion.
Seventh, the only possible method to keep the mixture in a
homogeneous state is to induce turbulence prior to ignition.
Eighth, the only method known to cause turbulence are squish
bands or squish areas located in the combustion chambers which
help retain the air-fuel mixture. Ninth, squish bands have their
disadvantages too. They prevent total combustion as fuel trapped
between the squish band are less volatile due to the lower
temperatures caused by masking. Tenth, squish bands and
compression ratios have their limitations on creating
turbulence, often resulting in heat build up due to uneven
thickness of metal in the squish band resulting in detonation
and pinging under load. Eleventh, very often at lower operating
speeds incomplete combustion occurs causing excessive emissions
and poorer torque compared to diesel engines. Twelfth, leaner
air-fuel mixture result in slower flame velocities resulting in
excessive heat build up causing emissions of oxides of nitrogen.
Thirteenth, in two cycle engines the combustion temperature
builds up very rapidly due to the short intervals of combustion
occurring each revolution. Hence compression ratios are critical
and cannot be increased to four stroke parameters. Fourteenth,
the charge comprising of petrol/air drawn in the induction
stroke is invariably preheated due to engine temperatures and
further heated by compression bringing it to a critical state
before ignition. Fifteenth, carbon deposits in the combustion
chamber absorb heat and cannot dissipate the heat into the
combustion chamber and eventually contribute to preignition and
detonation and auto ignition once the engine is switched off.
Sixteenth, under load, lean burn, high compression engines
require very careful monitoring of air-fuel ratios and ignition
timing to avoid pinging and detonation resulting in excessive
emissions. Seventeenth, there are limits to which a petrol I.C.
engine could stand up to. Exceeding these limits the existing
combustion chamber design cannot cope with the following
parameters: a) temperature build up during combustion cycle
resulting in detonation and pinging under load; b) squish bands
greatly reduce detonation and pinging, but cause unburnt fuel
and excessive emissions; c) carbon build up in combustion
chambers and piston crown build up compression ratios and
largely contribute to auto ignition and erratic and noisy
running resulting in excessive emissions; d) richer mixture
bring down combustion chamber temperature but result in
excessive carbon monoxide and Carbon emissions; e) leaner
settings result in low flame velocities and higher combustion
temperatures due to time lag, causing emissions of oxides of
nitrogen.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention provides a fuel-air turbulence prior and
during combustion, which causes a multipoint ignition in the
combustion chamber of I.C. engines, with the following distinct
advantages. First, more power output is derived from the same
given charge operating on the same compression ratio. Secondly,
lesser emission due to far more complete combustion is provided.
Third, far lesser carbon deposits in the combustion chamber,
piston crown and exhaust system occur due to controlled complete
combustion. Fourth, exhaust gas temperatures and combustion
chamber temperatures are lower due to quicker and even
multipoint flame propagation. Fifth, there is no pinging or
detonation or auto ignition due to reduced temperature in the
combustion chamber and no residue of unburnt fuel. Sixth, there
is better fuel economy due to improved and complete combustion.
Seventh, the use of higher compression ratios for the same fuel
without adverse effects is allowed. Eighth, lower octane fuel
may be used without any adverse effect on performance loss on
existing compression ratios. Ninth, noise levels and combustion
vibrations are reduced due to even and complete combustion.
Tenth, the reduced operating temperatures due to the short flame
travel and complete combustion greatly reduce oxides of nitrogen
and carbon and extend engine oil life and prevent contamination.
Eleventh, lesser ignition advance is required due to the high
degree of turbulence resulting in quick and efficient combustion
delivering a) improved torque and power outputs, b) lesser
emissions and carbon deposits, c) improved specific fuel
consumption, and d) lower operating temperatures and noise
levels enhancing engine life. Thus, according to the present
invention, the above advantages are achieved without side
effects.

This particular invention includes a specific design change to
the "squish" band or "squish" area located in the combustion
chamber or piston crown of I.C. engines. This specific design
change further enhances turbulence in the charge prior and
during the combustion cycle by varied flame velocities in the
form of multipoint ignition. The rapid multipoint flame front
engulfs the air-fuel charge resulting in controlled complete
burning of the charge in the shortest possible time with no
residue of unburned fuel. This unique form of controlled
complete quick combustion greatly enhances power characteristics
and greatly reduces emissions of nitrous oxides and carbon
monoxide.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING

These and further features of the present invention will be
better understood by reading the following Detailed Description
together with the Drawing, wherein

FIG. 1 is a plan view of a two stroke combustion chamber
layouts with grooves 1, channels 2 and passages 3;

![](fig1.gif)

FIG. 2 is an elevational cross section layout of two stroke
combustion chamber with grooves, channels, passages and piston;

![](fig2.gif)

FIG. 3 is a plan view of a four stroke combustion chamber
layout with channels 2 and passages 3; and

![](fig3.gif)

FIG. 4 is a plan view of a close up layout of grooves 1,
channels 2 and passages 3 in the squish band.

![](fig4.gif)

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The elements of the Figures comprise: 1--grooves; 2--channels;
3--passages; 4--squish band; 5--combustion chamber; 6--piston
crown; 7--spark plug; 8--cylinder head; and 9--valves.

This particular invention works on the following principles Ref
FIG. 1 & FIG. 2 into or onto the squish band 4 or squish
area or flat surfaces of the combustion chamber 5, series of
grooves 1 or channels 2 or passages 3 are formed either in the
initial casting process or machined to specifications later.
These grooves or channels or passages form the shortest path or
passage from the spark plug 7 location to the ends of the
combustion chamber through the squish band 4 or squish area or
flat surfaces of the combustion chambers of I.C. Engines. These
grooves or channels or passages squirt the air-fuel charge
trapped between the piston crown and the squish band towards the
center scoop of the combustion chamber on the upward stroke.

The effects of the grooves, channels and passages cause the
air-fuel charge to be in a greater state of turbulence prior to
ignition in the combustion chamber. When the spark plug 7
located normally in the center of the combustion chamber ignites
the air-fuel charge, which presently is in a high state of
turbulence the flame front engulfs the dense volatile charge
present in the combustion chamber through these grooves or
channels or passages and causes flame turbulence in the ends of
the combustion chamber by the time the main flame front has
reached the piston crown. This form of multipoint combustion
causes total quick controlled combustion leaving no room for
unburnt fuel or temperature increase to cause pinging or
Detonation in the extreme ends of the combustion chamber. This
unique form of multipoint flame front combustion exerts the
maximum force of the expanding gases towards the piston crown
delivering optimum torque through the entire range.

Referring to FIG. 4, the grooves 1 or channels 2 or passages 3
act two ways. They induce turbulence in the air-fuel charge by
forcing the charge through these grooves or channels or passages
towards the spark plug 7 preventing fuel separation and
condensation taking place due to the compression applied and
prevent stagnation of the charge prior to combustion as the
reciprocating piston 6 comes to a momentary halt at TDC as shown
in FIG. 2. When the turbulent dense volatile charge is ignited
before TDC the flame front travels through these grooves 1 or
channels 2 or passages 3 to the extreme corners of the
combustion chamber causing a high degree of flame turbulence
while the main flame front engulfs the main change leaving no
form of unburnt fuel residue resulting in total controlled quick
efficient clean burn combustion in two and four cycle engines.
This unique design concept is applicable to all forms of two and
four cycle combustion chamber designs in I.C. engines
irrespective to the fuel in use. On diesel engines, the same
principles are applicable on the piston crown which performs
like a combustion chamber due to the small clearance volumes
required to attain the ultra high compression ratios and diesel
fuel being sprayed by the injectors located in the cylinder
head. In principle, the design functions on varied flame
velocities which actually cause the turbulence in the air-fuel
mixture during combustion resulting in a quick and efficient
combustion cycle compared to existing designs.

Thus, according to the method of according to the present
invention, improved turbulence is provided in the air-fuel
charge before ignition and greatly improving flame propagation
after ignition in the combustion chambers of two and four cycle
I.C. engines during the combustion cycle resulting in improved
engine efficiency over existing designs. Moreover, no previous
or existing combustion chamber has any resemblance or design
incorporating grooves or channels or passages either formed or
machined or drilled into the combustion chamber or squish band
or squish area or wedged area or flat surfaces to induce
turbulence in the air fuel charge prior to combustion on the
upward stroke of the piston. No previous or existing combustion
chamber has any design to induce turbulence other than squish
bands. Furthermore, after ignition occurs the flame front
engulfs the charge by simultaneously burning through the grooves
or channels or passages reaching the far ends of the combustion
chamber in the shortest possible time causing flame and gas
turbulence while the main flame front burns through the bulk of
the charge in the center scoop of the combustion chamber. No
present day combustion chamber operates on these principles of
multipoint combustion.

The multipoint ignition according to the present invention
brings about flame turbulence which in turn intermingles and
result in a combined total complete efficient combustion with no
residue of unburnt fuel. Such turbulence and other advantages
are provided by the unique physical layouts of the grooves or
passages in combustion chamber according to the present
invention, especially drawings FIG. 1, FIG. 2, FIG. 3 and FIG.
4.

The grooves 1, or channels 2, or passages 3 are either arranged
in a pattern that radiate out of the cylinder axis like spokes
in a hub of a wheel or in a pattern that radiate out of an
offset angle to the center or straight from the nearest point to
the spark plug extending to the ends of the combustion chamber
through the squish band or squish area or flat areas 4. These
grooves or channels or passages are either straight or angled or
curved and have a depth or diameter proportional to the
circumference of the combustion chamber in relation to the
cylinder bore diameter and squish band or squish area. These
grooves or channels or passages start from the extreme ends of
the combustion chamber and taper out to a point closest to the
plug. No past or present design of combustion chambers wither
two stroke or four stroke have any features or resemblance or
concept to inducing turbulence before and after ignition cause
multipoint combustion. According to the present invention, these
grooves or channels or passages impart a squirting and swirling
motion in the air fuel charge to create vortices that induce a
higher degree of turbulence in the charge prior to ignition than
any previous or existing combustion chambers in practice.
Moreover, these grooves or channels or passages, due to their
location, cause multipoint ignition once ignited partly due to
the shorter distances the flame front needs to travel and reach
the extreme ends of the combustion chamber while the main bulk
of the ignited charge located in the center scoop is thrusting
forward towards the piston crown. In these critical milliseconds
of the combustion cycle in existing engines the piston is
progressively loosing speed to come to a momentary dead halt at
TDC causing stagnation of charge before it starts to speed up in
the downward stroke. No previous or present day combustion
chambers have any method to induce multiple combustion and inter
mingling of charge occurring at this critical location of the
piston at TDC, resulting in controlled efficient combustion
utilizing the entire air fuel charge to its maximum efficiency
in the shortest possible time. Thus, according to the present
invention, these grooves or channels or passages cause rapid
progressive complete combustion in the shortest possible time
resulting in lower build up of temperatures in the combustion
chamber, piston crown, cylinder walls and spark plug. Lower
temperatures cause lesser distortion of metal parts resulting in
lesser "blowby" of burned gases past piston rings and valve
seats and better retention of compression ratios through the
entire range.

The lower combustion chambers temperature greatly reduce
emissions of nitrous oxide, oil contamination and oil
discoloring. Existing combustion chamber greatly fall short in
controlling excessive temperature build ups resulting in
pinging, detonation and auto-ignition.

Also, the varied flame velocities occurring after ignition due
to the formation of grooves, channels or passages result in
shorter flame front travel through the walls of the combustion
chamber to the extreme ends in comparison to the main bulk of
ignited flame front which needs to follow the profile or
contours of the combustion chamber to reach the extreme ends.
This form of multipoint combustion results in clean burn
efficient combustion with maximum utilization of the trapped air
fuel charge delivering improved economy, enhanced torque and far
lower emissions of carbon monoxides and carbon through the
entire range as compared to previous or existing combustion
chamber design. This form of induced turbulence in combustion
chambers greatly helps to retain air fuel mixture in an optimum
state for combustion. Once ignited the varied flame velocities
cause multipoint controlled clean burn combustion greatly
reducing combustion vibrations resulting in super smooth engine
operation through the entire range. No previous or existing
combustion-chamber design is capable of achieving total
controlled combustion with a single source of ignition achieving
all the above listed inventive features.

Therefore, this unique concept of forming grooves or channels
or passages in the squish area or flat areas of the combustion
chamber induces turbulence and optimum multipoint flame
propagation after ignition is applicable to all two and four
cycle petrol or kerosene or liquid petroleum gas engines of any
cylinder capacity achieving all the claims listed above with no
adverse effects.

Furthermore, the same principles apply to piston crowns of
Diesel engines resulting in lower emissions, smooth engine
operation and improved engine efficiency through the entire
operating range. Thus, this unique functions on varied flame
velocities which actually cause the turbulence in the air-fuel
mixture during combustion results in a quick and efficient
combustion cycle compared to existing designs.

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