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Concept
Sleeve valve
Summary
The sleeve valve is a type of valve mechanism for piston engines, distinct from the usual poppet valve. Sleeve valve engines saw use in a number of pre-World War II luxury cars and in the United States in the Willys-Knight car and light truck. They subsequently fell from use due to advances in poppet-valve technology, including sodium cooling, and the Knight system double sleeve engine's tendency to burn a lot of lubricating oil or to seize due to lack of it. The Scottish Argyll company used its own, much simpler and more efficient, single sleeve system (Burt-McCollum) in its cars, a system which, after extensive development, saw substantial use in British aircraft engines of the 1940s, such as the Napier Sabre, Bristol Hercules, Centaurus, and the promising but never mass-produced Rolls-Royce Crecy, only to be supplanted by the jet engines.
A sleeve valve takes the form of one or more machined sleeves. It fits between the piston and the cylinder wall in the cylinder of an internal combustion engine, where it rotates and/or slides. The cylinder wall has inlet and exhaust ports, identical to a two-stroke motor. Ports (holes) in the side of the sleeves come into alignment with the cylinder's inlet and exhaust ports at the appropriate stages in the engine's cycle.
The first successful sleeve valve was patented by Charles Yale Knight, and used twin alternating sliding sleeves. It was used in some luxury automobiles, notably Willys, Daimler, Mercedes-Benz, Minerva, Panhard, Peugeot and Avions Voisin. Mors adopted double sleeve-valve engines made by Minerva. The higher oil consumption was heavily outweighed by the quietness of running and the very high mileages without servicing. Early poppet-valve systems required decarbonization at very low mileages.
The Burt-McCollum sleeve valve was named for the two inventors who applied for similar patents within a few weeks of each other. The Burt system was an open sleeve type, driven from the crankshaft side, while the McCollum design had a sleeve in the head and upper part of the cylinder, and a more complex port arrangement (Source: 'Torque Meter' Magazine, AEHS).
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