Riff,
Thanks for that paper. Agreed it would be great if Ironbird taking to the sky kicked off new R&D to examine whether a modern incarnation of CCEP could generate the same level of improvement as CCEP is over the Napier Nomad (arguably first of the kind).
Perhaps I was too quick to dismiss Onetrack's mention of the Mazda approach. Certainly fuel systems able to handle kerosine are available for diesel engines, so it is not too big a leap to envisage a 3000 bar system able to cope with kerosine. The other thing to bear in mind is that diesels are efficient because of the high peak cylinder pressures, but there are other methods to reduce weight. For my money Steyr have been pretty close to the mark by avoiding a head gasket in their monoblock designs. It's no surprise that the M16 was selected by Austro for an aircraft engine (my initial thought was TEOS must be using the Steyr part bin):
from
http://www.mackboring.com/Commercial..._Features.aspx
SAE papers on Steyr monoblock:
Steyr Monoblock High Speed Diesel Engine Family Powerful, Cost Effective, Compact, Low Noise, Ware-Resistant and Fuel Effective
The New Generation of High Speed DI Diesel Engine with High Specific Power and Durability