Ford & UCLA Design Hybrids Powered by Air

Air hybrid technology currently in development could result in fuel savings as great as 64% during city driving and 12% during highway driving, says a study from the University of California, Los Angeles. A team led by Tsu-Chin Tsao, a UCLA mechanical and aerospace engineering professor, is collaborating with engineers from Ford to get the technology up and running. The system is similar to that of a hybrid-electric vehicle in that braking energy is harnessed and stored to assist the engine as needed during acceleration. The air hybrid system differs in that it does not require a second electric propulsion system, resulting in saved weight and manufacturing cost.

The engine uses a valvetrain with electrohydraulic actuators rather than a conventional camshaft, allowing for greater variability in valve operation. During operation, when a car is decelerating the engine functions as an air compressor, absorbing braking energy and storing it in an air tank in the form of compressed air. The engine is shut off when the vehicle stops but is started up again by the compressed air when the driver touches the throttle. The car then accelerates under air power until the compressed air is depleted and the engine switches back to combustion mode. Work is now being done to optimize the size of the air tank and possibly to adapt the technology to diesel engines. We've all heard of the common Diesel and Otto cycles for internal combustion engines, and perhaps the Miller and Atkinson cycles that have made their way to advanced production and concept hybrid vehicles. These thermodynamic cycles describe the operation of reciprocating piston engines. Less known is the Scuderi Cycle, named after its inventor Carmelo Scuderi, a first generation American engineer who, after retiring in 1994, invented the Scuderi Split-Cycle Engine concept. It is called a Split-Cycle because the four strokes of a four-cycle engine are done by two paired pistons intake/compression and power/exhaust. A crossover passage transfers compressed air from the intake/compression cylinder to the power/exhaust one. Fuel is injected and fired to produce the power stroke. Unlike a four-stroke engine that fires every other revolution, the Scuderi engine fires on every crankshaft revolution like a two cycle engine. It still has four separate strokes so it doesn't have the disadvantages of two-stroke engines.

In a four-cycle engine, on theintake stroke of the piston, the piston moves from the top of the cylinder to the bottom while the fuel/air mixture is forced into the cylinder. On the compression stroke, the piston moves upward to compress the mixture. When the piston reaches the top of its stroke, the mixture is ignited and the pressure resulting from combustion forces the piston downward on the power stroke to produce power. As the piston moves upward on the exhaust stroke, the products of combustion are forced out of the cylinder. A two-stroke engine works differently by combining the intake and power strokes and also exhausting combustion products during this combined intake/power stroke. The Scuderi engine features firing after