An engine with no crankshaft, where the pistons float on air? It’s not a dream; it’s a free piston engine and it might be the next major advance in car tech. When we think of automotive technology of ...

Everyone generally knows about piston and rotary engines, with many a flamewar having been waged over the pros and cons of each design. The “correct” answer is thus to combine both into a single ...

Sandia National Laboratory led by Sandia researcher Peter Van Blarigan that has been testing physical components of free-piston engines which could be 50% efficient. This is about twice as good as ...

(Part I and II of this series is here and here.) DUB6 writes: I recently read a rather wordy story about how many/most auto ...

One of the many challenges facing engine designers is the need to increase power output while simultaneously retaining or improving efficiency. Although a four-cylinder engine is still an engineering ...

While Tesla, General Motors, Nissan, BMW and other automakers doggedly push to bring battery-powered vehicles into the mainstream, Achates (a-KATE-ezz) Power engineers are betting that an old ...

Dimpled pistons might sound strange, but some say they could be the future for diesel power. We've looked at the arguments ...

The first recognizable internal combustion engine was developed by Nikolaus Otto in 1861. Since then, the gasoline-powered engine has evolved immensely. However, the principles that underlie how ...

Pistons play the ultimate role in an engine, but despite that, it's still hard to fully wrap your head around all the forces involved. There are plenty of moving parts in an internal combustion engine ...

Despite being in use for more than a century, combustion engines are still way to complex and inefficient in turing fossil fuel to mechanical work. Naturally, engineers have been battling their way ...