It seems like this engine has been proposed for years w/o results. That makes me doubt the fundamentals.

Perhaps the tranfer between cylinders is where the difficulties emerge.

How do these articles even get posted on this website??
Let me get this straight...Toyota, Honda, Nissan,etc. have overlooked a major design like this. Uh Huh. I know, we will see this and it will work great by the year 2017............

their just desperate to keep that old ICE going in one form
or another , 100 years old and still poisoning our children!

The Scuderi engine is just a Piston Actuated version of a turbo jet engine and a newer version of a Brayton Cycle engine. The Scuderi company has had enough money to avoid actually building even a small prototype of the engine for quite a number of years and has relied on expensive computer simulations instead. It is ordinarily assumed that computer simulations don't prove anything, so a bad simulation result will not diminish the enthusiasm for a device nearly as much as a failed model, so the raising of venture capital can continue for quite a few more years.

It is of course much easier to invent and build a successful engine than it is to to get it adopted by a large or small automobile company. If the price is just the slightest bit higher than the lowest price of an engine produced in the millions of units already, no car maker will adopt it. They have no reason to adopt it when there is no actual price incentive for them to do so. Most car buyers do not care about how much gasoline is used, and gas economical cars have always been sold at such a premium price, so that it is truly more economical to buy a nearly junked used car every year or so and then another one when it fails and pay for the extra gas required. And if you have a lot of money and can afford to buy a Hummer; you can afford to buy the gas. Almost no one would buy a true economy car now days. It is possible, with modern alloys, to build a diesel powered VW 1960 car that meets US highway standards and uses half the fuel per mile of the original and has an electric hybrid option, but it would not be sold in the US because it did not have the new features the customers want, especially lots of horsepower and computer gadgets.

The Scuderi engine would be a very good and useful engine, and the hybrid engine version of it has the advantage of not requiring additional heavy motors or batteries. The Scuderi hybrid engine would not even require a starting motor, and if for some reason the pressure in the air tank were depleted a small battery powered air compressor could pump up starting pressure in a few minutes even from a few standard akaline D cells if the regular battery had failed. There is no weight advantage of a large pressure tank compared to a bunch of small pressure tanks of equal total capacity, so all spaces no matter the shape or size could be used for compressed air storage even hollow body support members.

The ability to recover exhaust energy is also a high efficiency feature available. In fact exhaust heat could be saved in a high temperature heat storage device and the car could run for minutes without burning any fuel at all during those minutes. Electric heaters could keep the highly insulated heat storage device hot so that a car could drive from your garage in the morning for a few minutes to a store and back without burning any fuel at all.

The Capstone microturbine uses a heat recovery device on most of its microturbines and increases their efficiency substantially. A half sized Capstone microturbine should be built into a Tesla car and get rid of half the battery. The Capstone turbine does not produce particulates, like a diesel engine does, even when running on diesel and practically sucks polution out of the air. In thick freeway traffic, the air comming out of its exhaust has less smog and smog producing elements than the air going in. Every commecial building and every large apartment building should have had Capstone turbine built into their heating systems with energy recovery, but low first cost is more important to developers than efficiency. It is the final owners not the developers who have to pay for low efficiency as it is with cars. Only legal efficiency standards for both buildings and cars will eliminate this energy waste.

The hybrid scuderi type of engine would allow you to have a standard transmission, and you would never have to use your clutch at all when creeping in a traffic jam. The car computer would calculate when a spray of fuel and a spark was necessary every few minutes or so.

HG..

Can someone please help point me in the direction of where and how to report Scuderi. My husband has gotten caught up in investing in this company, along with other family members. I think they are a crackpot company who are just bilking the public out of money. ANd have been doing so for years. They tell investors that they have to form their own LLC so that Scuderi won't be scrutinized by the SCC, why wouldn;t Scuderi want to be scritinized by the SCC, is they were legit, they wouldn't have a problem going public or letting the governement know that they have 100's of little investors, they have just made 40 of these investors from a LLC so they are seen only as 1 investor by the government. and they tell the investors that Ford and Chrysler, blah blah blah, all want to buy into them...trust me if one of those companies wanted in, why not take THEIR money, instead of the little christian persons money, which by the way is the majority of the people that Scuderi hits on for this. This engine is 40 years old, and they have NEVER made a prototype...they always say..oh just a little more money, just a little more money...They were given a bone by their politician frined in Mass, who sent them 1.2 million dollars of our government money , which was hidden under the guise of "homeland security funds". He is thier buddy this politician, and happens to be a holder of a piece of the pie. Not sure bout you, but I think they are crooks taking $$ from the little guy, living lavish lifes. If you know who I should go to to investifgate this company, please let me know.

The fundemental laws of energy and energy creation as we know them completely dismiss this horror story as a realisticlly possible in its current state. Truth, it holds potential but then again so does my cup. you don't see me filling it with gas, and expecting it to power my iron horse do you?, well, do you?
Think about it.

Scuderi management has been nothing less than spetacular on handling the development of the company and the engine. The different teams chosen by the Scuderi's have all excelled in their respective functions(Southwest Research, Topaz Partners, Nick, Sal and many others not mentioned). Some people are impatient and others are skeptical but the Scuderi's will not rush this engine without proper testing and patent protection. If I was a investor I would be overly happy about the progress as it will be coming to fruition in 2008. The Scuderi's and their organization are nothing less than incredible and their father Carmelo Scuderi a genius. If I had an investment in this company I would be very excited.
genius

Where to start?

Lets start with Patent US7121236 by Mr Salvatore C. Scuderi (B.S., J.D) and Mr David P. Branyon. How to describe this? Well it can be summed up by one word.

CRACKPOT

Yes it's a crackpot crank. Mr Scuderi is supposed to be an Engineer. They can produce a displacement diagram in Fig 15 on sheet 14 and then demonstrates they can produce a Velocity diagram for this cam in Fig 16 on sheet 15. A layman would have left it at the displacement diagram, only an engineer would take the step of producing a velocity diagram. Anyone worthy of the title "Engineer" would then use the same method to obtain Acceleration diagrams. Mr Scuderi and Mr Branyon have for some reason chosen not to.

No matter, the destruction of this device is readily apparent from the Velocity diagram in Fig 16. There are sudden changes in velocity, labeled 254, 255, 257 and 258. These apparently instant changes in velocity require infinite acceleration. Force = mass x acceleration so infinite forces will be produced that hammer the cams guiding the big end pin to bits in a very few revolutions of the crank - possibly while dry cranking. (It will be the fault of the people that made the test engine, law suits will fly or it will demonstrate the huge uncontainable excess of power the engine made)

A brief google for "SVAJ cam mae" gives a good primer on cam design from Western Michigan University and why the work presented in US7121236 is not a viable design.
Fundamental Law of Cam Design
1 The cam function MUST be continuous through the first and second derivatives of displacement across the entire 360° interval
2 The jerk function MUST be finite across the entire 360° interval

Analysis of the REAL thermodynamic cycle that the Scuderi Air Hybrid engine can achieve will show large departures from the ideal Brayton cycle, resulting in losses that render it completely unworkable.

I can only suspect that the staff of The Scuderi Group are well aware of this deficiency or they wouldn't be engaged in the wild and desperate measures seen in US7121236 to extend the duration of the transfer phase to the power cylinder.