Studying Valvetrain Motion and Dynamics

From the April, 2009 issue of Circle Track magazine

By Jeff Huneycutt
There's no doubt that the valvetrain is the most complex part of any engine. It's also pushed the
hardest against some incredible stresses. Manufacturers are putting tremendous amounts of
resources and some pretty innovative research systems into place to advance the science of the
valvetrain, and the things they are learning are quite interesting.
One of the keys to finding ways to improve the valvetrain is to be able to look at it as an entire
system. An engine, of course, is comprised of many interrelated systems. For example, the
ignition system is made up of the distributor drive gear, the distributor shaft, rotor, cap, wires,
plugs, and coil. Each piece is required to ignite and burn the air/fuel charge in the combustion
chamber. If one piece is missing, the entire system fails to work. Likewise, if one piece of the
system is functioning poorly, the performance of the entire system will suffer.
The same holds true for the valvetrain, which is made up of more components than any other
system. In a pushrod-style engine, this system is comprised of the drive belt or chain, camshaft,
cam lobe profile, lifters, pushrods, rocker arms, valve springs, valves, retainers, and locks. Just
like with the ignition system, all the parts of the valvetrain must work individually and together
as a complete system. This duality of roles can cause problems that are often missed. It isn't
uncommon to make a change to a component-say a valve spring retainer-that is an improvement
(maybe a reduction in weight, or an increase in strength). But when that "improved" component
is added to the system, overall performance suffers.
This is because our new "improved" piece doesn't play well with others. This doesn't mean that
the new part is a poor choice for every valvetrain system, just this specific one it was tested with.
Because there are so many variables involved (everything from lash to the stiffness of the
pushrods to the weight of the valves), you can never assume that identical changes to similar
valvetrains will produce identical outcomes.
Individual Components versus the System
Reducing component weight is one of the Holy Grails of most engine builders (particularly in
high performance and racing) because it often allows increased engine speed. Unfortunately, one
of the side effects that often comes from reducing the weight of a component is decreased
rigidity. This means it is more easily bent or twisted, and it also changes that object's natural
frequency. The natural frequency of an object is the rate at which it vibrates. We'll delve deeper
into the importance of natural frequency a little later.
In the following two illustrations, the amount of valve bounce of two different valves at different
engine speeds are tracked and compared. In Figure 1, two steel valves, one weighing 115 grams
and the other weighing just 99 grams are compared. At first, you would think that the 99-gram
valve would behave better because its lighter weight should mean that it would be more easily
controlled by the spring. This, however, isn't the case. The lighter valve exhibited significantly

more bounce between 5,600 and 7,200 rpm. There can be many reasons for this, but the most
probable is that the thinner head of the lighter valve provided a "springing" action when it was
pulled against the seat, creating a bouncing effect.

In Figure 2, the same test has been performed with two titanium racing valves, in this case
weighing 97 and 85 grams. Here, the amount of bounce changes with engine speed in two ways.
First, the bounce is reduced almost everywhere. Second, the speeds where the bounce is greatest
is different. In this case, the lighter valve seems to help where, in Figure 1, this isn't the case
across the entire rpm range.

The same type of surprises can also be found with valve springs. Tests of a number of different
valve spring combinations show that a group of springs that measure the same on the seat and
over the nose don't produce the same results.
In racing, the double spring is most commonly used because it allows for greater combined
spring pressures. What many people don't realize, however, is that different springs can use
different combinations of inner and outer springs to achieve the same total pressures. In other
words, two sets of springs may measure the same when checked as assemblies, but when you
break them down into individual components and compare the two inner springs or the two outer
springs, they may be completely different. The weights, stiffness, and natural frequencies may all
be different. Figure 3 shows a graph plotting bounce with two different springs that check out
the same as complete assemblies but are quite different as individual components. This is why a
spring set from one manufacturer may have all the same specs as one from another manufacturer
but behaves completely different than the other set once it is installed in an engine that's in a
vehicle or put on a dyno. It's not until you break everything down to the individual component
level that the real reason for the performance difference becomes visible.

The same thing holds true for camshafts. A cam profile that produces horsepower or rpm gains in
one engine may reduce power in another with a different valvetrain setup. For instance, a little
more peak positive acceleration on the profile in one engine might pick up the power over the
entire operating speed range. Applying the same philosophy to a cam profile in another engine
might hurt the power all over the board and make the engine lose a few hundred rpms.
Understanding Vibrations
Understanding how a valvetrain will react at very low rpm levels is relatively easy. At low rpm
levels, the inertia in all of the various components does not come into play as they move.
Predicting how a valvetrain will behave at 1 rpm-or even 1,000 rpm-is relative child's play
compared to predicting what will happen to that very same valvetrain at 7,000 rpm.

At higher rpm levels, the speed at which the valvetrain moves is much greater. The inertial forces
acting on every component comes into play in a big way. At slow speeds when the valve is
opening and closing, compressing the valve spring is the main activity that creates a force in the
valvetrain. As the engine speed increases, the pushrod and rocker arm are required to move the
valve and compress the valve spring at a faster rate. When this happens, the magnitude of the
forces seen in the valvetrain increases. The additional inertia force causes more deflection in the
components than the force of the valve spring alone. To aggravate the situation even more,
because these forces are cyclical, vibrations can occur in the components. In other words, at high
rpms you have to consider the valvetrain a system of vibrating components.
By definition, a vibration is a motion that happens repeatedly within an object. It is measured by
how frequently this repeated motion occurs within a period of time (hertz). Every object has its
own natural frequency, or the speed at which a vibration will travel through it. When the speed
of the input causing the vibration (engine rpm) matches the natural frequency, the vibrations
build upon one another, gathering strength each time. This can be very damaging to the
component and even the components attached to it. Likewise, it is also possible that the cause of
the vibration can be timed to conflict with the component's natural frequency so that the two
cancel each other out. By working with a general understanding that the valvetrain is a system of
vibrating components, we can work to mix and match the components (and their natural
frequencies) to minimize the effect of vibrations on the system. The result is more dependable
performance, better valve control in the upper rpm ranges, and increased component life.
A good example of how vibrations can alter the intended performance of a component is the
change in loading on a pushrod as the rpm changes. As the cam begins raising the lifter and
pushrod, the pushrod sees a spike in load as it tries to overcome the inertia stored in the mass of
the rocker arm, spring, valve, retainer, and locks. The loading drops once those components
begin to move, and there is a vibration that travels up and down the length of the pushrod. At the
7,000- and 8,000-rpm levels, you can see how radically the loading changes on the pushrod
versus the lower rpm levels. The vibratory waves also grow and contract with respect to
crankshaft rotation as an effect of the pushrod interacting with other components. This is one
reason many engine builders are going with larger pushrods in high-rpm applications. Even
though you might think the lighter weight in a smaller pushrod would be more beneficial at high
rpm, it is often actually better to go with a stronger (and thus, heavier) pushrod that exhibits less
deflection as a result of these loading forces.
When you consider the effect of vibrations on the valve springs, it gets even more interesting.
Valve springs have flexibility, so they suffer from the largest deflections because of vibrations.
Not only that, but the frequency of the vibrations (and the loading on individual coils) changes
because the coils actually collide and create a force spike that changes the shape of the vibration
wave as the valve is opening. This can cause a phenomenon called "spring surge," which is a
major culprit behind the loss of valve control in many racing engines. When allowed, progressive
rate springs are very effective at controlling this. They actually utilize the closing up of the active
coils in the spring to damp out vibrations due to spring surge.

Of course, we don't want to go too much deeper into this or we will quickly reach the point
where engine builders will become frustrated physics students. We'll leave the actual
mathematical models to the engineers who drool over that kind of stuff. The point here, whether
you are an engine builder or a racer who simply wants more power (who doesn't?) is that many
problems caused by poorly matched valvetrain components are mistakenly blamed on other parts
of the engine. If the engine is lying down, don't automatically assume that the heads are too small
or the ports need more work. It could be that poor valve control caused by vibrations is keeping
the engine from working as efficiently as it can.
Always Test, Never Assume
While helping Circle Track with this article, Thomas Griffin, one of the lead engineers for Comp
Cams, gave us the following example of how assuming anything when it comes to the valvetrain
can lead to trouble. Sometimes, it just makes you feel better to know that even the Cup guys
make mistakes.
"The pressure to reach higher engine speeds and more valve lift is always present. In a particular
case several years ago in the Nextel Cup world, the approach for some engine builders was to
take some existing cam profiles and throw more and more rocker ratio to them to achieve this
goal. The word got around through the garage that the Chevy guys were able to do this, so quite
obviously, the Ford guys tried it.
"But the same combination of parts that were running in the Chevy engines didn't work out quite
the same in the Ford engines. The cam profile, the pushrod, rocker arm ratio, and valve spring
were all the same, and the weight of the valve, retainer, and locks were all the same. The
assumption that everything here is the same was proven incorrect, though.
"The barrel size of the two camshafts were different, and the geometry of the valvetrain
components were different. The valvetrain is a system of components that must be properly
selected to operate in a violent environment, and a poor-but common-assumption is that the
valvetrain is insensitive to subtle changes. The Ford engine pushed the limits of valve bounce
farther than the components allowed. What's bad is that the Ford valvetrain customer failed a few
valve springs in a couple of races before getting around to testing the setup on a SpinTron."
Reprinted by permission of Circle Track magazine.