Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

Simple construction, no harsh vibrations from compression ignition (the cylindars fire one at a time I believe), regenerative braking, great power to weight ratio.

I think that this is the engine of the future. Doesn't matter if we run gasoline, disel, ethanol, or hydrogen. This is it.

I should think it could be improved even further by replacing the center crankshaft with a simple pivot bearing, then putting a cam profile on the outer ring to provide the compression needed for diesel operation. Maybe rollers on the piston ends too.

For gasoline operation a spark plug could be mounted recessed in the piston with the conduction of HV going thru the roller to a HV spot in the cam profile.

This way you still get the benefits of having rotating mass (except for the outside ring) and reduce the bearing problems with the crankshaft.

KS

My thoughts exactly, dursun. This is much like the dot-com boom of the late 1990's. Fuel economy and hybridization is the hot new thing and all these companies are promising riches to anyone that will dump a load of venture capital on them. Of course, they'll use that capital to first, give themselves a huge salary and bonus, and second, build an unmarketable prototype engine that will never do anything to produce a ROI for the venture capital.

more of the same!!!

I might not completely understand this concept, but I think this has the same downfall of the WWI engines in that the engine has a large rotating engine mass that generates large centrifugal forces that result in high stress and wear.

How is the engine lubricated?

Back in the 70's during the first and second oil crisis, Popular Science would have a "new " engine design on the front cover every other month. Other than the Wankle we never saw them again..until now. If you want to do an interesting project, go to the library and look at back issues of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics from 1973 to 1978. I don't remember a design from that era like this one, but there are many others. I don't see basic engine design affecting efficiency as much as the development of electronic controls to manage fuel metering.

Thank-you Tony C. That was a definate LOL moment for me, nicely put.

First, Thank you for your time visiting this forum.

1)When will you have a working unit?

2)If the fly wheel effect helps fuel economy, why don't normal hybrids have them, even just a less massive unit?

3) ("pump-motor",) why isn't Hydraulic power transfer, to the wheels, used today in cars?

Ah, Hi, Mr. Greenwell, the original inventor. How good to have your most informative reply.
1) Regarding your claim that reciprocating motion cost 50% of piston engine's efficiency: I DON'T THINK SO. In a piston engine, the downward power stroke of the engine transfers kinetic energy into accelerating the flywheel, which will in turn power the rest of the non-powering strokes of the 4-stroke cycle. Reciprocating action of the piston does not waste energy nor power to any appreciating extend, providing that a flywheel is provided to absorb the energy. You don't believe this? Just look at the Wankel rotary engine. This engine has none of the reciprocating action of a piston engine, yet it is 20-30% less efficient than piston engine, most of this reduced efficiency is attributed to poor combustion process causing of more unburned or partially burned fuel in the exhaust. The lack of reciprocating action DOES NOTHING improve the efficiency of the Wankel rotary engine.

2) You haven't answer how you are gonna provide thousand-psi-level fuel injectors for this compress-ignition engine. Nor have you answer how to provide for poppet valve action in order to make it a 4-stroke cycle gasoline engine. As such, you'll have to resort to 2-stroke-cycle operation, with all associated disadvantages.

3) If you can't make your engine to run in efficient low-exhaust-emission, compress-ignition mode or 4-stroke-cycle mode, then the advantage of your engine in being able to run at optimum speed for 20% of the time and shut down and coasting for 80% of the time using flywheel-action will be a moot point.

Any auto manufacturer can simulate the action of your engine by using a conventional auto engine and a similar CVT connected to a significant flywheel capable of much higher rpm than your engine, hence reducing the weight of the flywheel significantly. (remember that E=1/2M(V-squared)) Using a CVT connected to a flywheel to increase the speed of the flywheel from 2000 rpm as in your engine, to 10,000 rpm will be able to store the same kinetic energy as your engine at 1/25 the weight of the rotational mass of your engine, hence making the additional weight of the flywheel negligible. The flywheel can be made even lighter than 1/25th the rotational mass of your engine if nearly all of its mass will be concentrated at the periphery of the flywheel, which is the way all flywheels are made. The entire advantage of your engine can be simulated by this last paragraph without none of the unproven concept or hardware associated with your engine concept. The low energy stored in your engine flywheel action means that the engine must be constantly turned on and off, and the CVT must constantly be adjusting its ratio, hence will greatly increase the wear and tear rate of your engine and transmission.
Of course, Toyota has evaluated this along with hundreds of other energy-storage hybrid schemes, and found that this flywheel concept would still be inferior to their gasoline-electric Atkinson-cycle hybrid layout, hence that's what we see in the market place today, gasoline-electric hybrid, the precursor to the long-anticipated plugged-in hybrid that will promise to liberate us from petroleum dependency.

Your follow-up comment will be greatly appreciated.

The wankel is not a true rotary engine, if it was a single rotor would be all thats necessary. Swept area heat dissipation as well as the impracticallity of trying to seal the combustion chambers with reliability are unresolveable issues. To use it in a comparison to this engine has no true revelance, they are completely different in every way. I owned a RX2 in 1973, the engine disintegrated at 12,000 miles, the dealer replaced it for free, it got 12 miles per gallon in a 2000 pound car. The current RX8 gets in the low 20s on the highway, great for performance, atrocious for economy.

My Scion XB at 68 MPH is running at 3000 RPM, and consuming 2 gallons of fuel per hour (34 MPG). At 3000 RPM the pistons, and a certain amount of the mass of the connecting rods is reciprocating. Each piston (and piston pin) must start at TDC and accelerate to 90 degrees, then decelerate to 180 degrees, accelerate to 270 degrees, and decelerate to 360 degrees, undisputable fact.

At 3000 RPM that equates to 50 RPSecond.
Thats 4 acceleration and deceleration cylcles, four pistons, 50 times a second, for a total of 800 oscillations PER SECOND. Are you claiming that has no energy cost, again against the laws of physics. Test this on a dyno, fuel consumption rates at loads of 20 lbs torque, then 40, and 50 (pick your best engine). When you look at the results on graph or run the dyno with no load, the engine still uses 50% of the fuel consumed at the 50 lb torque setting. My engine could rotate at 3000 RPM for an hour, while consuming fuel to compensate for losses less than 1 minute in that same hour. Thats a ratio of 60 to 1 and it could easily be 120 to 1, where your engine is running and mine is not. A toy gyroscope demonstrates this clearly.

The flywheel in your engine is there to dampen vibrations, it has no effect on the forces generated by this reciprocation other than to dampen the inherent vibrational chaos in violating Newtons laws of inertia. You need rubber engine mounts to further dampen the vibrations, and you need to run the engine when no real work is being done, at least 700 RPM, to overcome the cost of reciprocation, and even more vibration. I have seen race cars with lightened flywheels where the gears in the transmission rattled at speeds below 1500 RPM,in neutral, due to the lesser weight of the flywheel. Bottom line is the addition of a flywheel in a conventional engine does not allow you to violate the laws of physics. Without a flywheel, your car would be undriveable, and would soon shake to pieces. The weight of your flywheel is an impediment to performance, ask any race car mechanic. Oh and also remember the crankshaft counterwieghts, harmonic balancer, all for the sake of dampening vibration due to reciprocation. They even had to put balance shafts in 4 cylinder engines above 2.4 liter displacement to further dampen vibration. Do I need to keep going? How many bandaids does your engine really need? None are necessary with my design.

The question here is how much fuel does the Scion consume just to keep the engine running at 3000 RPM, with the vehicle stationary in neutral. Dont try it on your car, since the fuel rail absorbs heat that returns fuel to the gas tank, running the engine like that causes the fuel temperature in the tank to climb fairly quickly, so accurate measurements are almost impossible.

The original aircraft rotary engine was a miracle in its time. I am aware of no other piston in cylinder engine design that eliminates reciprocation. The originals were capable of 200 HP, at 1300 RPM, with a displacement of 750 cubic inches, and a weight of under 400 lbs, on fuel of such poor quality your car wouldnt even idle using it today. The Mercedes 200 HP grand prix engine of the same era had a displacement of 1400 cubic inches and ran at almost twice the speed of the aircraft rotary. The original rotaries were very expensive to build, and the engine cost more than the rest of the aircraft. Each cylinder was machined from a 96 pound nickel steel ingot to a finished weight of 6.5 pounds, an exorbitantly expensive and time consuming labor investment. During war cost was no object, after the war it became the only consideration, and combined with the castor oil vapor bath the original design withered on the vine. Today a CAD design and computerised milling as well as investment casting could pop them out lik rabbits, and they dont need cooling fins machined individually. Check the name Stephen Marius Balzer, look at the car he donated to the Smithsonian in 1899.

On the topic of emissions, since the basic design is still a piston in cylinder, all of the current emeissions technology is still viable. The logistics of application will require some work. A good counterpoint to this concern is to consider this.

Assume my calculations about unloaded running are correct, your engine is creating heat, while doing nothing (idling in a traffic jam). When you accelerate, you have more work to do to overcome the cost of reciprocation (at least 50% of the fuel consumed). When you are at aconstant speed that percentage is between 50% and 100% depending on the load you are applying to the engine. When you are decelerating a part of that deceleration is drag from your engine, to prove this put the car in neutral, compare the distance travelled to the distance if you just leave it in gear and let completely off the gas.

As far as a combination of conventional engine and separate flywheel, with a hydraulic IVT powertrain, that certainly is feasible. Check the 21st century roadmap on the web. You will see various configurations that describe you suggested application, and it is viable. The main problems are your engine needs to completely start and stop each cycle, while my design does not. Your application also uses a power source that is much less efficient than mine, you can argue the percentage difference, I will stick with my 50% figure.

All of this information is confirmable, if that is necessary. Several thousand hours of work here on this design, with a 40 year infatuation for automobils behind every statement.

I still don't know how your are going to lubricate the system and not contaminate the exhaust with the lubricant emissions?

I also don't know how you are going to capture the exhaust from all the different cylinders and route it away?

Forget about the flywheel issues. You have very large rotating piston cylinders that have treamendous amounts of centrifugal mass that will put great stress on your bearing control system. The mass will have to be great to achieve the high compression ration of 17:1 This added mass may also give you inertia trouble in transient operation with stop and start benefits. It it not so easy to stop and start this large rotating mass. You are going to burn much more fuel in these conditions.

Fuel induction is also a big problem without knock. If you have a center driveshaft induction that goes outward into the rotating cyclinders. This will be virtually impossible. You have gas vapor that will be underneath some pistons that are at TDC and igniting. The heat transfer through the piston will ignite any fuel vapor that is underneath the piston and in the center driveshaft area.

I don't see where you can overcome these problems and achieve the reliablity and durablity you need to be successful over current engine technologies.

Again, Mr. Greenwell, thanks for your most prompt and informative reply. Most automotive text books listed the disposition of heat energy of gasoline piston engine as follow: 35% of total heat energy is lost in cooling water, air and oil; 35% of total energy is lost in exhaust gas; 5% of total energy is lost in engine friction; and 25% of total heat energy is converted to mechanical energy at the engine shaft to power the vehicle. There was never any mention of 50% of energy lost in reciprocating motion of the piston, NOT IN ANY AUTOMOTIVE TEXT BOOK.
For the Wankel rotary engine, the heat energy of gasoline disposition is as follow: 22% to net hp at the shaft, 22% to coolant, 8% to oil cooling, 37% to exhaust gas, and 11% to UNBURNED GAS. So, if you add the 11% of heat energy lost to UNBURNED GAS to the 22% of mechanical energy at the engine shaft, you will get 33%, which is quite comparable to the 25% net hp of the piston gasoline engine plus the 5% lost thru engine friction. So, the Wankel rotary engine, while having no "50% lost of power thru its reciprocating motion" as you have asserted, gains almost nothing in term of efficiency as the result of having no reciprocating motion.
Mr. Greenwell, you can't claim that your engine is any more "rotary" than the Wankel Rotary engine, so why should we believe you that your engine will gain the 50% of efficiency that the reciprocating piston engine has lost thu its reciprocating motion? The physics of a reciprocating piston engine is as clear as daylight: At the engine bottom-dead-center (BDC)the piston has transferred all of its kinetic energy into the rotational kinetic energy of the flywheel by making it turning faster, in a single cylinder engine, while in a 4-cylinder engine, the down-going power stroke piston also sends some of its kinetic energy accelerating the up-going compression stroke of another piston in the same engine. This power is transferred via the crankshaft and the flywheel. The more cylinders you have in an engine, the smaller the flywheel you can get away with and the smoother your engine will run. Thus, a WWII 2-row 28 cylinders corn-cob engine with so many cylinders firing in one revolution, can approximate the smoothness of a turbine engine, with the energy of one piston transfer directly to another piston going opposite direction without major fluctuation in the rotational speed of the crankshaft. Of course, at high rpm, the frequent acceleration and deceleration of the pistons put considerable strain on the piston pin, connecting rod and the crankshaft, so the Wankel rotary engine can turn higher rpm at less risk of engine destruction than in a piston engine, but it is a fallacy to suggest that energy is lost as the result of the reciprocating action of the piston. You can see with your own eyes that in a multi-cylinder engine, the piston movements is like a see-saw action, with complete kinetic energy transfer of one piston to another. Yet, are you aware of any report that multi-cylinder engines are any more efficient than single-cylinder engine? No, NONE WHATSOEVER. Either the kinetic energy of the piston is transferred to accelerating the flywheel in a single-cyclinder engine, thus wide fluctuation in rotation speed of the flywheel, or is transferred into the acceleration of another piston going in an opposite direction with a see-saw mechanism at the crankshaft. Complete conservaton of energy principle.
Please kindly get your engine to run on its own two-stroke Otto cycle, sir, and do careful dyno study of it, and then you'll see.

How can the inventor begin to have any credibility, when he keeps claiming that reprocating engines spend 50% of their energy consumption overcoming the "cost of reciprocaiton"? As Roger Pham pointed out, and I have always understood, the friction losses of a recip engine is in the neighborhood of 5%. Perhaps, if you rev up the engine WITH NO LOAD the frictional component might be significant higher, perhaps that's what the inventor is referring to. But who sits around with an engine running at 3,000 rpm and no load? In any case, it is this most inneficient mode (idling with no load) that hybrids and auto-start technologies are addressing. Meanwhile, my head spins at great speed imaging all the huge problems this concept intrinsically introduces. The inventor refers to DD 2cycle diesel design; venerable as it was, this has been totally phased out recently because of efficiency and emissions issues. The really big question: has even the most rudamentory protoype of this engine been built after years of the inventor's research??? Doesn't sound like it.

Sounds like it's time for me to find and ressurect some long discarded engine concept from the ash heap of history and hope some suckker offers me 2 million.