IRIS Engine

The IRIS Engine is a design for a new type of internal combustion engine. Its inventors say that engines constructed using this design can be smaller, lighter and significantly more efficient than traditional engines of comparable horsepower and displacement. The design replaces the piston and cylinder architecture of conventional engines with a purportedly novel mechanism called the Internally Radiating Impulse Structure, or IRIS.

In January 2008, the IRIS Engine design won first prize for transportation technology in NASA's annual "Create the Future" design competition. In October 2008, the Radial Expansion Engine (RXE), a variant of the IRIS design, won a major award in the ConocoPhillips Energy Prize competition.