Balance shaft

Balance shaft in Ford Taunus V4 engine.

Balance shafts are used in piston engines to reduce vibration by cancelling out unbalanced dynamic forces. The balance shafts have eccentric weights and rotate in opposite direction to each other, which generates a net vertical force.

The balance shaft was invented and patented by British engineer Frederick W. Lanchester in 1904. It is most commonly used in inline-four and V6 engines used in automobiles and motorcycles.

Overview

Lanchester's vertical force balancer. The eccentric masses are labelled "C" and "D".

The operating principal of a balance shaft system is two shafts with an identical eccentric weight on each shaft. These shafts rotate in opposite directions to each other at twice the engine speed. The centrifugal forces result in vertical forces which are designed to cancel out the vertical second-order forces (at twice the engine RPM) produced by the engine. The horizontal force produced by each balance shaft is equal and opposite to the other shaft, therefore the horizontal forces cancel each other out.

Engines which use balance shafts are sometimes referred to as "externally balanced", and the balance shafts do not reduce the vibrations experienced by the crankshaft.

Applications

Two-cylinder engines

Numerous motorcycle engines— particularly straight-twin engines— have employed balance shaft systems, for example the Yamaha TRX850 and Yamaha TDM850 engines have a 270° crankshaft with a balance shaft. An alternative approach, as used by the BMW GS parallel-twin, is to use a 'dummy' connecting rod which moves a hinged counterweight.

Four-cylinder engines

Valve timing gears on a Ford Taunus V4 engine. The balance shaft runs off the small gear on the left (the large gear is for the camshaft, causing it to rotate at half the speed of the crankshaft).

Balance shafts are often used in inline-four engines, to reduce the second-order vibration (a vertical force oscillating at twice the engine RPM) that is inherent in the design of a typical inline-four engine. This vibration is generated because the movement of the connecting rods in an even-firing inline-four engine is not symmetrical throughout the crankshaft rotation; thus during a given period of crankshaft rotation, the descending and ascending pistons are not always completely opposed in their acceleration, giving rise to a net vertical force twice in each revolution (which increases quadratically with RPM).

The amount of vibration also increases with engine displacement, resulting in balance shafts often being used in inline-four engines with displacements of 2.2 L (134 cu in) or more. Both an increased stroke or bore cause an increased secondary vibration; a larger stroke increases the difference in acceleration and a larger bore increases the mass of the pistons.

The Lanchester design of balance shaft systems was refined with the Mitsubishi Astron 80, an inline-four car engine introduced in 1975. This engine was the first to locate one balance shaft higher than the other, to counteract the second order rolling couple (i.e. about the crankshaft axis) due to the torque exerted by the inertia caused by increases and decreases in engine speed.

In a flat-four engine, the forces are cancelled out by the pistons moving in opposite directions. Therefore balance shafts are not needed in flat-four engines.

Five-cylinder engines

Balance shaft are also used in Straight-five engines such as GM Vortec 3700.

Six-cylinder engines

In a straight-six engine and flat-six engine, the rocking forces are naturally balanced out, therefore balance shafts are not required.

V6 engines are inherently unbalanced, regardless of the V-angle. Any inline engine with an odd number of cylinders has a primary imbalance, which causes an end-to-end rocking motion. As each cylinder bank in a V6 has three cylinders, each cylinder bank experiences this motion. Balance shaft(s) are used on various V6 engines to reduce this rocking motion.

See also

• Balancing machine
• Engine balance