Today’s invention may have only a very minor effect on overall fuel economy but it may help to reduce wear and tear within conventional combustion engines.
Each piston crown would be equipped with a disc of permanent magnetic material (increasing inertia and compression ratio only slightly).
Each cylinder head would have an electromagnet powered by an upgraded spark-plug coil. Its magnetic field would be gradually powered up and reversed in polarity through the combustion cycle, so that the piston would be attracted upwards and then repelled downwards within the cylinder.
The main benefit of this would be to provide a more gradual, controlled piston motion than can be achieved using fuel detonation alone. This in turn would lessen inefficiencies and the damage caused by eg ‘knock’ effects and other sources of irreversibility.
