Hydraulic displacement machine

Abstract

A hydraulic displacement machine that can operate as a pump or a motor in connection with an electrorheologic or magnetorheologic fluid includes a housing, a rotary piston arranged to rotate within a chamber in the housing, at least one displacement vane provided on the rotary piston, a plurality of field generating elements such as capacitor plate segments and/or coil arrangements that are each individually electrically energizable and that are arranged on the two sidewalls of the housing chamber distributed around the circumferential direction, and an actuator connected to each field generating element so as to move the elements of each pair selectively closer together and farther apart from each other. By applying an appropriate electric or magnetic field to the electrorheologic or magnetorheologic fluid between the field generating elements, the fluid is locally solidified in the "flow mode" to form a stationary seal plug within each fluid chamber between respective consecutive vanes. By moving the field generating elements of each pair closer together, the seal blockage is further solidified so as to additionally achieve a "squeeze mode" effect in the fluid.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.