Shockwave-Generating Wave Discs Could Replace Internal Combustion Engines

I like the simplicity of this though I am sure this took some hard work to build.

It would be interesting to see its efficiency to power output as compared to a gas/diesel engine?

Without a transmission I can't see how this would have any kind of usable torque at low rpm though.

This is outside of my engineering field but it is interesting to see new takes on standard technologies.

Holy Guacamole... could this be the great-great-great grandfather of UFOs?

Wow, I want one.

Love, Peace & Soul

This would be an amazing leap forward for automotive design.

From what I can understand of the link this is being developed only as a generator component to produce electricity in a hybrid electric vehicle. The description reminds me of a Wankel rotary engine, maybe just because it rotates. However I think it might still have problems with sealing each wave chamber especially over time as the engine ages, same as the Wankel.

I would like to know how they ignite the compressed mixture.

It looks cool and i think i will make one but i dont see it coming out any time soon because of greedy car companies like to hold out on all the best advances in tech.

Excellent work.
Are there any sealing or lubrication problems? It reminds of the Wankel Rotary engine, simple to construct with less parts...until you add all the emission controls and lubrication systems.

@Rapier153, we were thinking the same thing at almost the same time. How many Rx7's have you owned. Myself 5 first gens, 2 second gens and tested a 3rd gen for a while.

@All4it I can't say I am so affluent or old enough to have owned more than a couple of cars so far neither of them Mazdas, also I think I'm too large in both height and girth to ride in most sports cars. I like the interesting and/or odd techs so I found out about them on my own... a coworker of mine where I used to work was a big enthusiast of them had just traded his 2nd for his 3rd before I left.

Love it! hope it works on diesel, ethanol, vegetable oil, waste restaurant oil, too. We will soon enough, be subjected to Thorium reactors, Thorium-nuclear/electric bullet train networks and their associated infrastructures. We will soon enough, pilot short-hop, ultra-light, rechargeables from trains to front doors. Oil is truly finite in this world, Hubbard and his curves were not a spoof. America will soon lose its fine highway systems to 400% more efficient, nuclear/electric rail. The jet fueled, inter-continental flights will soon rise in price, out of reach for American wage-earners. This little engine, powering a plug-in Hybrid, just could extend Americana similar to today's life-styles, for a little while longer. I certainly hope so.

Not much torque I'd bet... but who cares? The real value seems to be fuel efficiency and weight savings. Coupled with a generator, batteries and an electric drive this puppy could produce sports car performance with excellent mileage and long range... and all the torque you want.
As far as longevity is concerned, it must be super cheap to build so, what does it matter? A machinist could make one of these out of an old turbocharger in a few days.

It sounds like a Wanekel.

If gas is going to almost depleted within the next 20-40 years what does this technology matter? A little late....

@Es0sxteen
ethanol, butanol, biodeisel, or straight up vodka could probably be used. the added efficiency of the engine itself would still make ethanol more efficient than gasoline in today's internal combustion engines. this would make developing those fuels much more attractive.

@calebscape808
I think the automobile companies would actually make money by forcing people to purchase a new vehicle because gas prices would skyrocket by approximately 400%(60 / 15 = 4).

"I like the simplicity of this though I am sure this took some hard work to build. " yes in a way it does seem very simple but I have a feeling the psychics and thermodynamics involved are FAR FAR more advanced than a normal combustion engine.

"greedy car companies like to hold out on all the best advances in tech."
I have no doubt that car companies would endorse this technology. just look at a company like porche\audi\bugatti (all same parent compapy) so many firsts came from those copanies. they had no problems bring things like cermaic dics breaks to cars, magnesium rims, adjustable suspensions. all those were a first for car for the public from porche. tiptronic shifting now found in over 30 cars is also from Porsche. A lot of tech came from the Bugatti veron that we now see in everyday audi like the "W" engine configuration.
I see no reason why they would hold this tech back. When the rotary (Wankel) engine was made for the winning F1 car, mazda could not wait to bring to that to public in the their rx-7.

I could not begin to imagine how much faster we could make cars with this engine. Most of the super cars and high end sports cars attain their speed merely by increasing the efficient of the power lower ratio. being able to simply get more power to the road. its no about the HP. Plenty of cars from the 70's had MORE hp than many of the super cars today. but its no contest.

Interesting. Sounds somewhat like the Wankel rotary engine, but has similarities to turbine engines. How fast does this spin? What's the efficiency at different speeds? Is that 60% efficiency a theoretical number or has it been demonstrated in working prototypes?

Wonderful! A new way to burn hydrocarbon fuel and emit CO2. Oh yes, and it still has all the thermal efficiency defects of any combustion engine -- thermodynamics still applies and over 60% of all the fuel energy & $ put into it will be wasted as heat out the exhaust.

It might be good for a hybrid, but doesn't eliminate any "1000 lb drivetrains", since they don't weigh that much even in our 25-year-old, 5000lb Jags.
;]
--
Dr. A. Cannara
650-400-3071

PS, call me about my special $100, no-food diet plan!

60% thermal efficiency?..."Too good to be true" detector is going off. Show me the math.

This is interesting, but I wonder who is generating all of the hyped up numbers. The New Scientest site is a lot more modest. The Next Big Thing Site has these same numbers, but I'm not sure that they are attributing them to the inventor.

At any rate, it would be nice to just concentrate on the tech with some mention of the hopes for the future. (Perhaps with some mention of why the improvements are likely).

Anyway, I hope that this tech is a success -- it looks like fun.

I too greet this news with raised eyebrow. I guess we'll find out a year from now.

Note that the idea of US automakers and oil companies keeping a fuel-efficient technology locked up with patents no longer seems applicable in an era when China offers strong competition. An automotive engineer in China is probably going over the specs to reverse-engineer a prototype right now.

60% efficiency my a$$. Well, unless the combustion temperature is significantly hotter, or the compression ratio significantly higher than a conventional petrol engine, it's still going to be limited to the theoretical Carnot efficiency of about 45% assuming a 10:1 compression ratio and petrol fuel.

I wish someone would just build one of these genius engines and show us. Instead of always telling us how great it is and we never see it. The rubber needs to meet the road.

sdchanman is exactly right! Unless I can buy it its just vaporware.

I would buy this tomorrow! We all so sick and jaded of articles about revolutionary new designs that NEVER EVER see the light of day.

Why would car companies hate this tech?

Better fuel efficiency = govt off their backs, increased fuel costs (artifically through new taxes to drive consumers to the new engine), thus new car sales, and increased maintainance as the system wears. All increase $$$ for the car companies.

Big Oil can always maintain profits by reducing supply (which saves them money on production and maintaince price per barrel profitability).

What Big Oil fears is an electic car (which is really a coal/natural gas/nuclear car on the grid). Since this makes the electric car a non-plug in gas burner, they still make money - albeit off of $20 a gallon gas.

It's not limited to 10:1 compression. There is no compression. The ignition creates a shock wave that compresses and burns the fuel simultaneously. Timing and fuel air ratio variances are the only limitation on power generation. As RPM increases the amount of time the fuel has to burn decreases so there is a limit but this is a piece of genius at work. It will not have as much torque but it's real value is generation of electricity... they'll get the torque from an electric drive. Speed, distance, performance... Tesla should have thought of this.
I'm exhausting CO2 right now... good stuff... grows trees, they love it.

I wonder what it will sound like? Will it have the rumble of a cherry bomb fitted street rod? -- Hum like the Jetson's family car? -- Or, will it whoop like a 50s era flying saucer? (Ala, "War of the Worlds:1953")

Joking aside, just like good sci-fi shows get cancelled by pinhead network execs, (Firefly), for being too damned smart, innovative, and -- Gasp! -- intelligent, auto manufacturers will reject this idea for the very same reasons.

"no transmission, cooling system, emissions regulation or fluids needed."

Um, why not? How do you use the power with no transmission? There is still combustion happening, seems like it might get hot, and hence need cooling, same idea with emission regulation. And I would think with the spinning metal parts you would want some lubricating fluids.

Hi i am a young inventer. I thought this engine up as well, just over a month ago, and have been trying to design it with via cad to attain some credibility. It bothers me that i only have a grade12 diploma and i was held back from being one of these innovators because i could not afford post secondary and i dont have funding. A large amount of inventions and ideas are passed by just for this reason, and it really bothers me because we could be advancing much faster if people were willing to listen to deep thinkers without necessarily caring about their education. I have many inventions if anyone wants to talk about funding me feel free to contact me lol. If anyone at MSU involved in this project is stuck on a problem contact me and i might be able to help figure it out.

... Also i forgot to mention i have designs for this type of engine for everything from a compact to a semi up to a prop plane engine. Contact me

Double wow, this is absolutely awesome. The stunning simplicity and lack of moving parts is astounding--and the 45% increase in efficiency is beyond amazing--I want one for real. Will he allow anyone to pay royalties to use his design?

I have my doubts. Like this would not have been discovered before. With all the money involved.

this is the best news i've heard all day.

You kids, just because it is fuel efficient doesn't mean it isn't powerful. Often, more so... How "fuel efficient" cars work is by reducing fuel consumption in traditional engines. Like how a geo metro would.

This is a different motor. Which means that the energy (Read: not torque) generated is harnessed differently. It is 60% efficient. That means 60% of the fuel's energy output is being transferred to mechanical energy as opposed to 15% in a traditional car engine. This means 4x the energy output with the same amount of fuel.

Looks like a great idea! I just hope that the car companies can actually put into practice affordably. There are plenty of good ideas floating around that need to be acted upon and put into new cars. I hope this one makes it.

I can't believe popsci wrote an article on a wave disk engine that was developed 7 years ago.
(www.egr.msu.edu/mueller/NMReferences/PiechnaAkbariIancuMuellerIMECE2004-59022.pdf)

Government Grant equals tax payer dollars. Michigan State University must have used up all of our $2.5 million and wants more, because they built this prototype many years ago. So ask yourself, after 7 years where is our working $2.5 million wave disk engine?

too bad it still needs expensive fuel to run. How bout we just do what Henry Ford intended for his model T.
INDUSTRIAL HEMP ethanol.
it was also made out of hemp fiber. 10 times stronger than steel. HEMP costs absolutely nothing to grow not needing irrigation, fertilzer or chemical to grow. Its cheap and easy to make ethanol out of.

or how bout Stanley Meyers WATER POWERED CAR?
this technology is bogus. we already have FREE ENERGY invented by NIKOLA TESLA 100 years ago. Research "Perpetual Motion Devices".

How many inventors are "out there," ie, like ChayArch - if he's genuine - who could do the same thing, only better, if they had 2.5 mil. smakers? But that ain't the most of it. We see billions of our tax bux go into these "research" firms and universities, etc. with nothing to show for it all except announcements of "breakthrough" technologies. Sure, there's been a lot of stuff brought to market via this method, but the cost has been enormous for the results. Example that comes to mind just now: The EPA announcing the other day a linkup with Chrysler to develop hybrid hydraulic drive for passenger cars...the same thing they did back in 1992 or so up to around 2004. Back then Ford announced through their work with the EPA a breakthrough in pickup propulsion, the "launch assist" and we would soon see it in dealer showrooms. Here it is 2011 and all we got is nada from Ford for the millions they got and a new announcement from the EPA reviving an old program. I'm 65 years old and have been seeing these headlines for new types of engines since from at least 1960. I've long ago stopped getting excited.

Im calling BS. This is basically a less efficient turbine engine (if you will notice a turbine is a straight through design) that is in its infancy. Meanwhile turbines have been around for the past 70-ish years and still haven't made it successfully into a production automobile. ( do see the chrysler turbine car however). There is basically a waiting list of cool and wonderful improvements that could be made to internal combustion engines and this thing can just get in line. Some ideas have been implemented but just in the wrong market to get the right attention. (Direct injected 2-strokes made by bombardier and evinrude. Twice as many power strokes=about 2x the power per displacement based on the 2 stroke principal and none of the wasted fuel) If only I was a millionaire and a philanthropist, I could make the world such a more efficient, fun and faster place. Because life should be lived sideways in my opinion.

Interesting. To be honest, my favorite part of this invention is the name. How cool is it that near-future technology has names like "Shock Wave Generator"? I think, from now on, there should be a scale of "How sci-fi does this name sound?" and if your invention's name doesn't score at least a 7/10, you are legally obligated to change it :P .

-IMP ;) :)

Looks and sounds similar to the inner plate of Viktor Schauberger's Repulsin motor - especially the top view of the main rotor plate.

http://www.discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/Viktor%20Schauberger.htm

@IceMetalPunk

LOL! I'd vote to make that a law, even if I had to do it by text (for $3.99 plus tax, plus any applicable charges that may be incurred by your carrier)!

If this is commercially viable, it ranks up there with Craig Venter's synthetic life and Kepler telescope's discovery of 40 some Goldilocks planets, both events which I compared to the discovery of fire-making, animal husbandry, and agriculture. Ok, not quite, but this is one step away from those types of discoveries, this is groundbreaking news!

TOO LATE! GM just bought the patent and this design is going into the secret vault with all the other game changing ideas of the last 50 years.
just kidding.....or am I?

Strange that it uses the word "wave" . Nostradamus used the Wave as a transportation method. Not what I expected.

This thing could fit on a bicycle.

Well just taking a look at the thing and using a bit of common sense it probably works something like the traditional combustion engine with the key difference being that the heat of combustion that increases pressure can actually be factored into POWER. In a typical combustion enging the pistons up and down motion are what attribute to the engines power. The combustion itself is what drives the piston up and down and much of the pressure from that combustion is lost in the gap between the cyclinder wall and piston. Looking at the rotor above I think the GROOVES are the key component. In my uneducated opinion it looks as if these grooves would be directing the pressure in a downward rotating direction so that the more fuel that is ignited by the injection process the more pressure is created and directed by the grooves, speeding the rotation and producing more torque, though I'm sure that the injection timing will get a bit tricky with this sucker speeding around. Now bear in mind that this is under the assumption that the above picture is stationary, if thats residual motion in the picture from rotation of the rotor then I could be sorely off. Then again I may be sorely off anyway. Nevertheless, way to go Michigan. Auto industry goes down, lets find a way to put ourselves back on the map.

This looks like a rotary version of the pulse-jet engine. A very interesting concept, as the V1 certainly worked well enough.

However I suspect that the majority of the energy efficiency comes from the assumption of a full-hybrid drivetrain. Normal engines can halve or quarter their emissions once they're inserted into a plugin, simply because the hybrid technology means they can work in a highly fuel efficient but tiny torque range.

this is a great invention to the Car makers or the OIL companies won't let it happen. They will lose to much money.
Like when the electric trolly was replaced by the bus.

this is a great invention. To bad the Car makers or the OIL companies won't let it happen. They will lose to much money.
Like when the electric trolly was replaced by the bus.

This has nothing to do with this engine, but correct me if I'm wrong. There are NO electric/diesel hybrids or, if they're not the same thing, an electrically assisted diesel in standard production. If there aren't any, why hasn't someone made one? If there is; why haven't I heard of it.

This seems a very clever combination of two old forms of aircraft propulsion power plants.axial flow turbo and pulse jet(buzz bomb) both used during world war II.Now this motor has no valves which were and still are a weak spot for pulse jet engines but doing away with the "pulse"cycle and replaced it with a"wave" cycle.This coupled with the obvious turbo type vanes makes it a very clever, ingenious design.
Kudos fellas.About time someone found a way to generate a massive amount of power with as few moving parts as possible.
Imagine a vehicle with a bank of say...Three wave rotors to generate electricity to run super efficient electric hub drive motors.
At cruise only one rotor would function to generate a lower wattage to power during moderate demand.
Push your foot to the floor and all three rotors kick in to generate A massive surge of wattage to boost horse power with a modest fuel consumption.
The benefit in this motor is by my figuring it should burn a wide range of fuels with little or no noticeable difference.

Oh yea.They could boost this design by adding the new technology of adjustable vanes that is I believe starting to appear in the turbo boost set ups in commercial trucks.

While the compact size and port-controlled breathing of this engine is reminiscent of a Wankel, the similarities pretty much end there.

This is a completely different type of engine, designed for a hybrid application. This engine would not have a wide power band, and it may not even be all that good at running at anything much less than its top output. So it has to be connected to a generator with modern electronics allow the engine to run at a constant speed. The shock wave compression method employed by this engine requires a very specific narrow band of engine speeds to even work properly.

The Wankel turned out to be a dead-end technology. Despite the compact configuration it still works on exactly the same principles as a piston engine. The compactness comes at a very big fuel consumption and emissions control penalty because the curved combustion chambers have a very high ratio of surface area to volume which quenches hot combustion gases on the cold walls much more than a piston engine. The use of ports instead of valves also make for poor mixing of the mixture.

The ports are used on this engine in a completely different way. They basically slam incoming high speed air against a closed port, it compresses, they squirt fuel in, ignite it and the port opens to let the burning mixture through. As it passes through the vanes they get spun by the expanding gas.

It appears that the most practical use for this engine is to power a generator. The generator could be used to directly power an electric drive motor instead of an internal combustion engine in the vehicle and/or to charge a storage bank of batteries wired in parallel to boost the voltage needed.Question is, could enough torque be supplied to the generator for the required voltage? or would it take more fuel to power the generator than a direct drive system?