Cost-Efficient, Single Cylinder Research Engines

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Why a Single Cylinder Engine?


It's a powerful and cost-effective development tool

Development of passenger car, commercial and large engines: To assure fast and cost-efficient development of leading-edge engine technologies, FEV has developed a family of single-cylinder engines (SCE). This SCE family covers the complete range of four stroke engines from 65 mm bore up to 530 mm bore diameters. In combination with various possible strokes, this results in cylinder displacements from 0.2 to 155 liters. All members of the SCE engine family are capable of at least 300 Bar peak firing pressure to assure that FEV offers a tool which protects for future customer demands.

Advantages at a glance

  • Cost savings during operation & for prototyping
  • Reduced development time
  • Complete definition of series hardware
  • Main scope of calibration effort can be done on the SCE
  • Reliable and repeatable results


FEV’s advanced SCE Solution



The single cylinder is an efficient, robust and flexible development tool for combustion process development and mechanical testing of engine parts, since test results can be easily transferred from the single cylinder to nearly every engine layout.

Advantages of FEV’s SCE Solution

  • More conclusive test investigations
  • Flexible test bench variations
  • Optimized interaction between numerical simulation and experiments
  • Enables combustion development and hardware testing at an early stage of development
  • Allows advanced combustion research with the help of optical visualization
  • Fully modular design
    • High flexibility / short preparation time
    • Bore/Stroke configuration is easily reconfigured due to only a limited number of parts that need to be exchanged
    • Preassembly of modules makes quick exchange times possible
  • No restrictions regarding boundary conditions (exhaust backpressure, temperatures etc.
  • Design protects for operation at high loads (300 bar PFP) and engine speeds
  • Customer-specific single cylinder engines can be operated in FEV's in-house testing environment
  • Experienced SCE Team with strong customer service orientation

Features and engine architecture


The modular design of the single-cylinder engine family allows evaluation of almost every engine part that contribute to the combustion process. Customized engine designs, bore and stroke can be achieved by adapting only a small number of components. Among the typical variations are pistons with different bowl shapes, different injection nozzle types, or alternative valve lifts. In addition, different port contours can be tested and evaluated with respect to their influence on filling behavior which is caused by variations in swirl or tumble. Due to the flexible boost and back pressure parameters, every possible turbocharger configuration can be tested before a single hardware component has been realized. The SCE familiy is a powerful tool for combustion and functional component development for various fuel types as well as advanced combustion research with the help of optical visualization.


Main features and engine architecture

  • "Upside-down" design with the crankshaft mounted from the top
    • Robust design for high loads
    • Easily serviceable
    • Manageable effort for changing the engine's configuration
  • Base engine covers the complete application range without adaptation





FEV: Your proven turn-key partner


Regardless of whether our customers are OEMs, universities, engineering companies, component suppliers or even the oil and fuel industry: FEV has many years of experience in the manufacture and operation of single cylinder engines. As a result, more than 160 single cylinder systems have been produced to-date. Recently, FEV has completed over ten installations of the new single-cylinder engine family, covering all sizes and very individualized needs. In these ten most recent installations alone, the system has operated over more than 12,000 hours, and counting proving its reliability.

Every single-cylinder engine can be customized, depending on customer-specific needs, thus making it a powerful tool for combustion and functional component development as well as advanced combustion research with the help of optical visualization. For all of these purposes, the single-cylinder engine family assures repeatable test results under laboratory conditions.

To support testing needs and ensure high flexibility of the SCE family, FEV offers

  • Lubrication conditioning
  • Charge air conditioning including back pressure control
  • Cooling conditioning
  • Fuel conditioning and injection equipment
  • Engine control unit including test cell automation software
  • Advanced measurement equipment
  • Safety systems

FEV offers these products along with many advanced solutions that address specific customer demands. This unique service includes the entire process from planning through implementation of a single-cylinder engine either in an existing or a completely new test cell.

As a special service, FEV also operates customer-specific single cylinder engines within the FEV testing environment. To assure a smooth and quick realization of these customer projects FEV has base modules available in various sizes, which can be quickly used to perform customer investigations or converted into a customer-requested configuration.



Maximilian Bierl

Maximilian Bierl

Product Manager Single Cylinder Engines

Dirk Kirby

Dirk Kirby

Team Leader Single Cylinder Engine

Contact our SCE Experts




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