Intake Valve Throttling
schmidtj86 (Mechanical) said:
Also if you close the intake very early, there is no pumping losses when the piston goes down, because that same force that resists it going down, helps it come up (neglecting heat transfer, and friction).
Crystalclear:
Okay. But that's not what they are doing, is it? They are not closing it earlier if they want to partially fill a cylinder, they are closing it later. Normally you are sucking air past a restriction to run at low load. If you want to half fill a cylinder with air you could create a (throttle) restriction in the air flow, causing a pressure drop, and completely fill a cylinder with air at 1/2 an atmosphere pressure. Alternatively, you could close the intake valve when the piston was half way up and have half a cylinder of air at normal atmospheric pressure.
Now let's forget about the cylinder in both cases, as somebody will argue that (in the throttled case) the partial vacuum will help suck the piston up at the start of the compression stoke. But the work done to create a partial vacuum between the throttle and intake valve is lost.
Pumping losses is a generic term. You have to (1) suck air past a throttle. You have to (2) suck air past an intake valve and exhaust gas energy or a piston has to (3) push air past an exhaust valve.
Intake valve throttling is about reducing (1) the losses sucking air past the throttle, particularly at part load, by not having the throttle. I don't see how intake valve throttling can fail to recover the energy cost of creating the partical vaccuum between throttle and intake valve: energy lost when the intake valve closes and air seeps past the partially operated throttle ready to fill the cylinder when the intake valve opens next time.