Omega Owners Forum

Chat Area => General Car Chat => Topic started by: Rods2 on 24 April 2015, 19:23:19

Title: Turning the rotary engine inside out
Post by: Rods2 on 24 April 2015, 19:23:19

Rotary engines have many advantages, but the Wankel engine had a real weakness with it's low efficiency and rotor tip wear. A US company has produced a new design with no rotor tips and very high thermal efficiency which are ideally suited to small applications like power tools and generators. So will we be using rotary powered tools in the future and would they also be suitable for driving a generator in a hybrid car?

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a8174/liquidpistons-hyper-efficient-engine-turning-the-rotary-inside-out-13817971/ (http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a8174/liquidpistons-hyper-efficient-engine-turning-the-rotary-inside-out-13817971/)

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a15233/liquidpiston-darpa-contract/?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1457_172925453 (http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a15233/liquidpiston-darpa-contract/?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1457_172925453)

Title: Re: Turning the rotary engine inside out
Post by: minifreek on 24 April 2015, 20:53:26

Wow....!!!

seriously... thats a hell of an engine ....

Title: Re: Turning the rotary engine inside out
Post by: Gaffers on 24 April 2015, 23:37:18

Clever design but I can still see that piston getting a lot of wear without the fuel being mixed with oil to lubricate.

Title: Re: Turning the rotary engine inside out
Post by: ronnyd on 25 April 2015, 18:32:10

I think i will tell my neighbour about this as he has a dead RX-8 on his drive :D

Title: Re: Turning the rotary engine inside out
Post by: chrisgixer on 25 April 2015, 23:02:47

http://youtu.be/0e785YnDmq0

:y

Title: Re: Turning the rotary engine inside out
Post by: Kevin Wood on 26 April 2015, 10:32:56

Hmm. It still has tip seals, as far as I can see, but they are just on the stator instead of the rotor.

The increase in compression is a decent step forwards, but there is also an extra stage of transferring the charge between the cavities in the rotor and the combustion chamber which might affect the efficiency and how well it can breathe, so it might not be the rev happy monster that the original wankel was. :-\

Still, it's good to see someone thinking outside the box on engine design. I'd love a practical rotary engine. 8)

Title: Re: Turning the rotary engine inside out
Post by: chrisgixer on 26 April 2015, 11:58:44

Indeed....I envisaged the wankel being developed to the point it would only need to be 500cc eventually, by making all three chambers capable of combustion intake and exhaust as both the stator and rotor rotate in opposite directions.... Or some other sort of clever outside the box thinking, non of which I'm capable of even starting to understand how that could possibly be made to work. I'm f course.