Scuderi made a big mistake by taking long enough to develop the engine to the point where no car company could afford to buy it, but at least a few people got fed for a few years at scuderi.

The later arrival of their air hybrid design may make the engine worth something, but efficient european diesels are long since available. The steam diesel hybrid was invented over a hundred years ago, but has found its way to only one locomotive a few ships and an experimental car or two.

I guess that the money is running out so they actually have to finaly produce a prototype. It is too bad that their simulator did not predict the demise of GM and others along with the slightly increased engine efficiency. But even the lastest electric car adds emphasize acceleration over efficiency. Small low acceleration engines always had better efficiency. It was not wanted by most. ..HG..

Congratulations to the Scuderi team. This is a major milestone in bringing your product to the market and I wish you success in the work still to be done.

I am also looking forward to see you again at Engine Expo in Stuttgart in June.

Best regards,

Randolph Toom
Managing director of heat2power
www.heat2power.net

I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal April 21st, it said executives at Daimler, Fiat, Peugeot and Honda confirmed they were closely looking at the Scuderi Design, and all have signed NDA's. This engine is for real, please stop being critical as it serves no purpose, and the results are forthcoming in the very near future. Thanks

Sal Scuderi said at the 2009 SAE Tech.Show that the engine will be actually running around the middle of May. Hopefully you will have all the data necessary to change your opinion sometime this summer. There must be something there because most of the major OEM's have been expressing interest in this technology. A Daimler
engineer was quoted in the Wall Street Journal stating
"there is realistic potential here" Sounds good enough to me.

Please prove me wrong, but I don't think that compression ratio of 100:1 is possible in a functional, production engines. Unless it's a very long stroke engine, tolerance must be provided for difference in thermal expansion of the piston and the cylinder, and that usually reduces geometric compression ratio to below 30:1, using current materials. And then, there will be leaks through the piston rings and thru the valves...and you'll be down to a realistic 20-25:1 ratio as a practical,real-life limit.

But, the real limitation of this engine concept will be heat...too much heat in the power cylinders that will limit real-life power output for proper cooling, and too much heat in the valves of the transfer passage way that will affect durability. A big and under-powered engine will be a no-go in modern automobiles.

And then, after going thru all the troubles, the full-load efficiency of this engine in the NA form is now listed as "similar to conventional engine."

The air-hybrid mode will severely be limited by the very low energy storage ability of compressed air. Thus, it cannot replace the HEV-size energy-storage battery and electric motor if you wanna make it into a hybrid car of sort.

treehugger
"In the battle of life it is not the critic that counts;
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled,or where the doer of a deed could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be withn those cold and timid souls who have tasted neither victory nor defeat.

Maybe you should or can suggest a solution to your apparent problems with the Scuderi Engine design rather than being a basher with limit knowledge of what is actually going on.

TH AND TT
Am I missing something or are you two not doing your homework??? The proto-type is completed, Sal Scuderi said it would be firing by the middle of May. (refer to the website: www.scuderiengines.com) Why don't you call the Scuderi Group, ask for Sal Scuderi, sign an NDA, fly down to Southwest Research at your cost of course, to see the engine actually running. Maybe then you will stop bashing this incredible technology which has the potential to replace the otto for the next 15 to 20 years. If there was nothing to the Scuderi Engine Technology, ask yourself why are so many OEM's interested. I have to go with the major OEM's Top Powertrain Engineers over your unreliable assumptions.

pbf

I am not bashing anything, I am passionate about innovations, but after 25 years of carreer in R&D I am more and more impressed by real achievements and less and less by simulations and claims or oversold potential not backed by data, you seems to be a bit young and tender in the job, but take no offense i was just reacting as you do when I was your age. This "interest of big groups" is just hype, I know from experience that big groups are always interested in innovations in their field, and then ?

Scuderi Group is just words so far, so many words for little results. You know I had an old teacher who liked to opine : when we know everything about a science area, the litterature on the whole thing is a thin book. When we know nothing about a science area then there is ton of books about it...

But again I would be happy to be proven wrong, I am just tired of waiting and listening their blabla

@pfb,

Your enthusiasm is admirable, but please consider the following:

Compression ratio (CR) of 100:1 is not achievable in a single stage piston compressor with a dead volume of 1%, as Scuderi claimed in their website. This is because by the time the pressure got to near 100 bars, the volumetric efficiency of the compressor approaches ZERO. To get to a CR of 33:1, the volumetric efficiency of the compressor with 1% dead volume will drop to 66%. This is to ignore the tremendous heat and pressure generated to get to this level of compression. A heavy-duty diesel engine with CR of 25:1 has to be built heavily, with very beefy cranksshaft and block to withstand the large forces involved.

Unable to achieve this kind of CR in an engine that fires 15 degrees after TDC mean that you cannot achieve rpm's competitive with an Otto-cycle engine, and hence your power density (power to mass and weight ratio) will be severely compromise to the point that you'll no longer be competitive.

Heat concentration in the power cylinders that fire every downward stroke without exposure to cool intake air is yet another limiting factor in specific power capability of the Scuderi Engine. Two-sroke engines suffers a lot from heat-related engine failures in larger size. High-output Otto-cycle engines have to be richen the mixture enough to obtain sufficient cooling at high output, (cooling by fuel) meaning that even firing every other stroke still is not able to cool the engine down enough to prevent engine damage. WWII aircraft engines may also use water-methanol injection to produce WEP (War Emergency Power). This practice is too impractical and wasteful for use in a lean engine for Green car congress. This means that the Scuderi engine must have its power severely restricted to prevent engine meltdown, meaning it must be much larger in size for a given peak output...

From the above, there will be little room left in the hood for air-pressure storage tank for the pneumatic hybrid mode...Compress air stores very little energy in comparison to an NiMh battery...

Please address those major concerns before investing further in this technology...Perhaps these concerns have been addressed by Scuderi to the major OEM's without yet releasing the info to the public...we will see!!!

pfb

No my knowledge is very restricted, but I have been successful in my area though I am not that strong on "theory and simulation" because I stick to simple but powerful rules that very often avoid a lot of lost of time, in my compagny I keep wining awards for achievment in development (and believe me I am not competing for it, I don't care). All the idea of Scuderi engine is on the massive turbulence you create when you inject the compressed air front the 1st cylinder to the 2nd one then improving combustion then reducing emission and to a lesser extand improving efficiency. I like the idea because if it works you will be able to run gazoline engine like diesel with improved efficiency. The only problem is that there is nothing to day to prove that it really works. Simulation of turbulent combustion is beyond what simulatation can predict with a reasonable amount of confidence(sorry for that) so you can not be sure that this effect could not be offset by other undesirable effect. Sorry to lecture on you, but they could have build a bench to demonstrate specifically this highly turbulent mode that is supposed to improve the combustion, you don't need to built the whole engine for that, just a bench. Did they ? no they didn't, blabla instead.

It won't ever achieve the claimed efficiency.

They make claims to having 100:1 compression ratio for compression cylinder but this just proves they are stupid. The compression ratio is (swept volume + chamber volume) / chamber volume. For the compression cylinder the chamber is the transfer port or receiver vessel between the 2 cylinders. They don't actually have any more than 5:1 CR, add on the receiver vessel and it will be down to 1:1.

Then they open the inlet to the power chamber and reduce it still more.

Only way to fix this is to make the compressor 10x the size and then they will find they have 4% or maybe 5% overall efficiency - about 1/10 of current best such as Rolls-Royce Bergen K series.