Developers from St. Petersburg have proposed a gas distribution mechanism that allows individual engine cylinders to be shut down when the load decreases. This should help internal combustion engines avoid unstable operation in a mode that is particularly critical for diesel generator sets.
According to the concept, when the load falls below a certain level, the system switches some cylinders to a deactivated mode.
For this, a special valve tappet rotates 90 degrees: its working profile is replaced by a zero profile, which causes the rocker arm to stop opening the valve. Fuel supply to the deactivated cylinder also ceases.
The new system should allow redistributing the load among the remaining cylinders. As a result, according to the description of the development, the operating range of the DGU can be 25–100% of maximum power instead of the previous 50–100%.