Independent Design

                                                                        Ayn Rand

Independent Design

Admit it. How cool would it be to sell a few thousand of your designs or have a museum curator acquire a piece for their collection? Better yet how about your picture on the cover of a magazine where other designers would envy and hate you all at the same time? It's a seductive fantasy and for most it is only that. But for some, staking a claim in design is far more than fantasy. It's a way of designing, it's a way of life, that can be both spiritually satisfying and lucrative. To lead that type of life, follow Branchusi's simple formula: "Create like a god, command like a king and work like a slave;with an emphaisis on the later."

 

New engine design could double fuel efficiency of cars

The UK-based Nevis Engine Company is close to completing work on the second phase of testing of its functioning prototype of a new exhaust valve and intake system that’s claimed to be able to nearly double the fuel efficiency attained by conventional internal combustion engines.

At the heart of the design is both a new combustion cycle, labeled the ‘Bortone Cycle’ after the engine's inventor, Cesare Bortone, as well as the actual engine itself, which will be available in engine configurations ranging from single to eight cylinder formats. The design is said to achieve near-perfect combustion at all levels of power demands, such as city or highway driving, and it can be configured to run on petrol, diesel, bio-fuels or even hydrogen.

Some of the key aspects of the new design include the doughnut-shaped pistons, low engine weight and size, and the unique Bortone Cycle, which has six times the number of power strokes per revolution of a traditional four-stroke engine. To put its performance into perspective, a two cylinder version displacing 1.0L is estimated to develop peak output of 250hp. Let's hope it's not all pie in the sky.

Cams Replace Crank in new Engine Design

By Christopher A. Sawyer, Executive Editor

Crankshafts are inefficient devices for efficiently transferring power from the pistons to the driveline, with losses that can approach 36%. At the top of the piston stroke, where gas pressure is highest, force transfer efficiency is at its lowest, though it rises as the piston descends and the connecting rod’s leverage increases. Peak efficiency happens about 40% through the piston stroke, then drops at an exponential rate that mirrors its rise. In addition, the piston doesn’t travel a path that is strictly parallel to the bore, so an angular force equal to the pressure on the top of the piston is transferred to the cylinder wall. This increases friction, wear, and fuel consumption.

Bradley Howell-Smith, managing director of Revetec Limited (Sydney, Australia) and inventor of the Revetec engine, arrived at a solution to the problem in 1996, when he replaced the crank with counter-rotating cams driving an output shaft, and made the connecting rods rigid. (See: “How It Works”) “Within six months,” he says, “I had a twin-cylinder, 500 cc two-stroke demonstration engine no bigger than a loaf of bread running in my garage.” It put out more power and torque than an equivalent conventional design, and used less fuel. Convinced he was on to something, Howell-Smith suspended development, and spent the next few years raising capital and filing international patents (29 so far, including the U.S.). Development resumed in 1999, and included research into four-stroke, diesel, and alternate-fuel variants.
The latest version of the Revetec engine is the horizontally opposed 1800 SV; its swept volume is 1.8-liters (hence the name). It measures 280-mm long, 650-mm wide, 500-mm high, weighs 45 kg, and is scheduled to enter production in China later this year. Asked about his growing list of joint ventures with Chinese firms, Howell-Smith answers: “This is such a new and different concept that we thought it best to prove the technology in an emerging market.” In other words, he’d rather show established automakers a proven product than a proof-of-concept. “Life is too short to waste time battling the Not-Invented-Here Syndrome,” he notes wryly.

Inner cams attached to sleeve

One reason for the interest from China is the superior emissions performance Revetec claims for its design. Though the head design is totally conventional, the engine’s greater mechanical efficiency means 60% less fuel is needed to produce an equivalent output at wide-open throttle. That number rises to 75% in idle/no-load conditions, a big plus in crowded cities like Beijing. And less fuel means lower emissions.
Airplane manufacturers have expressed interest in the Revetec’s ability to drive counter-rotating propellers in a high-torque/low-rpm situation without the need for a separate drive unit or gear-reduction transmission. And ship builders are interested in the engine’s potential to maintain a near-constant piston speed. This increases control over propeller speed, and reduces the shocks conventional engine designs place on a ship’s drive system.

How the Scuderi Air Hybrid Engine works

New Engine Combusts Old Ideas

If your next car gets twice the gas mileage of your current vehicle, and belches out only a fraction of the pollution, you may have Carmelo Scuderi to thank.
Scuderi, a Massachusetts engineer and inventor, started tinkering with the fundamentals of the internal combustion engine when he retired in the mid-1990s. The result was a radical new design that could make engines for anything from gas-powered lawn mowers to diesel locomotives lighter, far more efficient, and a whole lot easier on the environment.
Scuderi died in 2002, shortly after patenting the basic concept for his engine. Since then, his children have made it their mission to bring the engine to market. Five of them now work full time for the family startup, the Scuderi Group.
Scuderi began by splitting the heart of the internal combustion engine -- the chamber where air is compressed, mixed with fuel and then ignited -- into two separate cylinders, linked by a passage. Air is compressed in the first cylinder, and then shot through the passage into the second cylinder, where it mixes with the gas and burns.