Rotary / Wankel engine

[Giblet]

Rotary thread brought back from the past?

I predict some Islamatron Evangelism soon

[Belatti]

Accelerating a mass and slowing it down, just to accelerate it again, again and again... well, that has always looked inefficient to me.
Rotary engines are what they are thanks to Mazda, but if just some of the other car manufacturers would have invested some cents in it, I think they would share 1/3 of the market together with diesel and gasoline piston engines.

The sealing is a problem? Oh! Come on! Rotary engines have... I dont know but I guess 1/5 the amount of pieces a piston engine has... and look at all the technology that modern engines have: VVT, DI, TGV, etc, etc.... so after all those efforts they cant develop a simple and cheap seal? PLEASE SOMEBODY HELP MAZDA!!!

[ISLAMATRON]

Actually Wankel development moved ahead much faster than with reciprocating piston engines, and Mazda pretty much solved all the sealing issues in the 70's and have improved tremendously since then.

GM had set up an entire factory to begin putting rotaries into all their products across the board but then the Middle East oil Embargo made them rethink the switch to a thirstier engine... they had even designed a corvette with a rotary in it.

With Direct injection(which mazda has a great system with their new Mzdaspeed3) the new all aluminum, bigger 16X rotary engine will solve many of the rotaries problems, Emmissions, More low end torque(actaully across the rev range) and better fuel consumption... and it will be lighter as well(being all AL)... cant wait.

[Carlos]

"The rotary engine began with an improbable dream one summer in 1919 by a 17-year-old German boy named Felix Wankel (1902 – 1988)."
http://autospeed.com/cms/title_The-Hist ... ticle.html

[ISLAMATRON]

Great link Carlos, thanks, In all my years of working on and researching rotaries i never knew of Wankel's childhood "dream", pretty cool.

[Scotracer]

Apart from the great noise a racing rotary makes, I'll never own a road car with one - they are far too inefficient on fuel and use a fair amount of oil. I'll just stick with Straight-6s

[ISLAMATRON]

the 2011 RX-7 just might change your mind... with Direct injection they are making huge strides in fuel economy.

[Carlos]

ISLAMATRON - Thanks; these links are also rotary related and interesting.
http://ceramicrotaryengines.com/
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/05 ... rotar.html

The snippets of information that settle are interesting. I mentioned direct air/fuel injection about 2 years ago here, the Orbital 2 stroke technology, in the recent 2 stroke thread the Orbital injector came up again, commenting on amazing leaps forward in both fuel economy and power, coupling with a clever ECU, increases in each has been suggested, in another thread riff raff commented that direct injection can at graphed at dozens of points during a cycle, now that would ge past some of the poor habits of rotary and 2 stroke engines.

[modbaraban]

Did ACO ban wankels? Courage C65 Mazda was the last non RX7-8 based race car with a rotary I think. It's the prototype they based Mazda Furai concept on.


sounds great!

EDIT: here's an inetersting piece on that LMP2 car
http://www.mulsannescorner.com/couragec65-9.html

[ISLAMATRON]

They banned them and then re-allowed them but restricted them to death... a 3 rotor running a 53.5mm air restrictor is absurd... I have a bigger intake on my 2 rotor. 400 hp out of such a small restricter(non turbo) is quite impressive, but I think less restricted it could have easily made 550hp. I've never made a N/A 3 rotor but I've seen 2rotor N/A race motors putting out over 300hp.

[010010011010]

The reason rotaries are so powerful, if i'm not mistaken, is because the rev so damn high, since the parts are always going the same way. theres no start stopping stuff like in normal combustion engines. really, they're a cross between internal combustion engines and jet engines. so if the rules were opened up so as not to discriminate against rotaries, why shouldn't jet engines be allowed?

To me the biggest problem in having rotaries against normal engines in f1 are the regulations. since theres no proper way of comparing these two engines the conventional regulations on displacement, bore, stroke etc.. cannot be used. which would lead to either A) two different sets of engine regs, which would lead to a lot of complaining and could never really be made fair. or B) a cap put on the power output, which would make engine development (except for maybe fuel economy) a useless endeavor.

I do appreciate the sound and engineering of a good rotary and the 787B is one of my favorite cars, but i cant see these two engines competing against each other fairly in f1.

p.s. has anyone heard anything about the rotary Mazda have been developing to run on hydrogen??

[modbaraban]

....so if the rules were opened up so as not to discriminate against rotaries, why shouldn't jet engines be allowed?
........

......two different sets of engine regs, which would lead to a lot of complaining and could never really be made fair......

Would jet engines comply with the rules that mandate the cars to be rear wheel drive?

Secondly was it fair when there were normally aspirated and turbocharged engines on the same grid? There were 2 sets of rules too.

[010010011010]

Would jet engines comply with the rules that mandate the cars to be rear wheel drive?

Turboprop engines have shaft driven power, so if even 1% of the engines power was driven through the wheels it'd still be rear wheel drive. but it'd get the other 99% through its exhausts. and of course it wouldn't be practical to use a jet in f1 i was just illustrating my point.

Secondly was it fair when there were normally aspirated and turbocharged engines on the same grid? There were 2 sets of rules too.

I don't think it was fair, as the turbos were much more powerful and if i'm not mistaken (which i could well be) almost all of the teams ended up using turbos till the were banned.

[Belatti]

Secondly was it fair when there were normally aspirated and turbocharged engines on the same grid? There were 2 sets of rules too.

I don't think it was fair, as the turbos were much more powerful and if i'm not mistaken (which i could well be) almost all of the teams ended up using turbos till the were banned.

At those times they limited turbo pressures and fuel amount. Many times people in the forum suggested to liberate engine technical rules and only regulate the amount of fuel burned per race, me included. That would be nice to see, but expensive to do. And sice F1 is not a battle of gentlemen and machines anymore, its not practical.

[ISLAMATRON]

The reason rotaries are so powerful, if i'm not mistaken, is because the rev so damn high, since the parts are always going the same way. theres no start stopping stuff like in normal combustion engines. really, they're a cross between internal combustion engines and jet engines. so if the rules were opened up so as not to discriminate against rotaries, why shouldn't jet engines be allowed?

To me the biggest problem in having rotaries against normal engines in f1 are the regulations. since theres no proper way of comparing these two engines the conventional regulations on displacement, bore, stroke etc.. cannot be used. which would lead to either A) two different sets of engine regs, which would lead to a lot of complaining and could never really be made fair. or B) a cap put on the power output, which would make engine development (except for maybe fuel economy) a useless endeavor.

I do appreciate the sound and engineering of a good rotary and the 787B is one of my favorite cars, but i cant see these two engines competing against each other fairly in f1.

p.s. has anyone heard anything about the rotary Mazda have been developing to run on hydrogen??

Rotaries are so "powerful"(power/displacement) moreso because it moves air(and thus fuel) into and out of the engine so quickly and efficiently.. I have been building rotaries for over 10 years and have never seen any run over 12K rpm, nothing close to F1 levels... but with F1 levels of development the reciprocating engine would be as extinct as V-12's during the Turbo era.

Hydrogen rotaries were easy for Mazda, so were diesel ones, now fuel efficient rotaries have eluded them for over 30 years, but direct injection, and even a hybrid motor or two could really turn that around... cant wait to graph some hybrid motors onto my RX7 for both AWD and improved fuel efficiency.