Originally published w/video at TEKNIKKA.com
Overview
Wankel engines, often referred to as a rotary engine, is an internal combustion engine that completes the four strokes of the Otto cycle by turning a rotor within an hourglass shaped (epitrochoid) combustion chamber.
The rotor is triangular in shape with convex sides and seals against the combustion chamber walls at each point of the triangle. Each point is called an apex and has a seal, referred to as apex seals, which trace the wall of the combustion chamber. This creates three continuously moving chambers. As the open chambers move around the perimeter their volume changes. As the volume reduces you get the compression and exhaust cycles. As the volume increases you get the intake and combustion cycles. This, in turn, causes the rotor to turn an eccentric drive shaft.
A Wankel engine has three chambers per housing and each turn of the rotor turns the drive shaft three times. In other words, there are three combustion cycles per rotation which results in higher power production than an equivalent four stroke engine. This design results in many fewer moving parts and a higher power to weight ratio.
[teknikka.com] Details
Early engines had intake and exhaust ports in the perimeter walls of the chamber. Contemporary designs place the ports on the flat sides of the combustion chamber.
The hourglass shape of the chamber is not very well suited to combustion. For this reason, each combustion chamber has two spark plugs. There is one on the leading edge of the combustion area and one on the trailing edge.
Rotors and apex seals are made of cast crucible steel.
Displacement is calculated as follows:
(Number of rotors)x(chamber volume)x2 = equivalent displacement
[teknikka.com] Wankel Motorcycles
Several companies put Wankel engine bikes into production. Most notably, Norton produced the twin rotor powered Commander, Interpol 2, Classic and F1. Suzuki nearly broke the bank with it’s RE-5.
Check out BSA’s patent for a wankel engine in our wiki by CLICKING HERE.
