Conventional Engine Design
The heart of the internal combustion engine is a piston connected to a crankshaft, moving up and down in a cylinder through the four strokes of the Otto Cycle, the intake, compression, power and exhaust strokes. In a typical four-stroke cycle engine, power is recovered from the combustion process in these four separate piston strokes within each single cylinder. This basic design has not changed for more than 100 years.

Scuderi Split-Cycle Engine Design
The Scuderi Split-Cycle Engine changes the heart of the conventional engine by dividing (or splitting) the four strokes of the Otto cycle over a paired combination of one compression cylinder and one power cylinder. Gas is compressed in the compression cylinder and transferred to the power cylinder through a gas passage.

The gas passage includes a set of uniquely timed valves, which maintain a precharged pressure through all four strokes of the cycle. Shortly after the piston in the power cylinder reaches its top dead center position, the gas is quickly transferred to the power cylinder and fired (or combusted) to produce the power stroke.

Inherent Advantages
By splitting the strokes of the Otto cycle over a pair of dedicated compression and power cylinders, the design of each cylinder can be independently optimized to perform the separate and distinct tasks of compression and power. As a result, the split-cycle design provides more flexibility in how engines are built. Features that were understood to be beneficial but impossible to implement in a conventional design can be implemented in the split-cycle design. For example:

1. the power stroke can be made longer than the compression stroke to over-expand the gas for increased thermal efficiency (the Miller Effect),
2. the compression piston diameter can be made larger than the power piston diameter to supercharge the gas for increased power; and
3. the compression and power cylinders can be independently offset to almost any angle for increased mechanical efficiency.

The unique combination of maintaining a precharged pressure in the gas passage and firing after top dead center in the power cylinder produces several additional advantages. These advantages include:

4. an extremely fast combustion rate,
5. a further increase in thermal efficiency, and
6. a significant reduction in nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions.