I wonder how feasible would it be for Mazda to build a diesel rotary. Have they tried in the past? Is it even possible?

 

It's certainly possible but requires a much higher compression ratio which brings its own strength of materials issues and historically therefore added weight to diesels. Good advances in the common rail diesel design tho' btw.

 

Paging RotaryGod

I don't think you could get enough compression on a rotary to ignite diesel

 

It would be cool to see, but I doubt it will happen.

 

mercedes benz already made one. many car manufactures have made wankles in the past. i read a book at the library a while ago it had the whole history of all the players that have played with the wankle.

 

spark assisted diesel has already been done on our engine. Pettit did it.
wasnt worth persuing.
OD

 

found it http://www.conceptcarz.com/vehicle/z...enz-C-111.aspx

 

Correct. Since we have to flow and compress air as opposed to just compressing it, that means as the compression rises, flow decreases. If we get compresion too high, flow is too low and now we have huge pumping losses. The compression limit on a rotary is around 11:1 or so which is too low for compression ignition. You can use spark ignition for a diesel though and this has been done before on rotaries. You obviously don't have the power that you would with higher compression and due to the nature of diesel flame front speed, you also don't get the high rpm use that a rotary is so good at. It's really best in a low speed application but due to the compression ratio and low displacement, you just can't get much power from a diesel rotary.

You could potentially get compression ignition through the use of a positive displacement supercharger such as a roots or twin screw. This would raise the effective compression ratio to a higher level. However at lower speeds you'd still need a spark or glow plug system. I would think that due to the lower power output of a smaller engine such as a rotary with lower rpm limits that they'd be best for use as generators or apu's.

 

I shiver at the thought.

 

And that doesn't include all the members here that play with their wankel.

 

is it bad to play with my wankle^ the benz looks like the deloran almost.

 

You just had to go there didn't you!