Hmmm... I just opened the first pages of this month's MotorTrend magazine and found something interesting. It looks like either by 2012 or 2013, there will be a car manufacturer other than Mazda that will have Wankel rotaries on the road. To my knowledge, other car companies had rotary engines in the past, but Mazda is the only one that stuck with them until now. Although quite opposite from the characteristics of a Rx-8... this Audi being an electric powered car, I thought it was interesting enough to share with you guys who are not aware of Audi's new plans.



Here's a link for you guys if you are interested.
http://www.motortrend.com/features/a...ine/index.html

Enjoy~ and I am sorry if this is a repost..

 

Cool, I read an article, somewhere, on an electric supercar that used a very small rotary to charge the batteries. Maybe this is related? I think it is interesting that the engine can be clean and efficient at particular, tuned for, RPM. Any idea on the sweet spot for the 13B?

 

theres a thread or two about it already. the engine is built by AVL . They also fitted their tech to a Mini for BMW



there is a sort of power point here https://www.avl.com/html/static/emag...A074B5.avlwp47 allow pop ups for this one

ive also attached a pdf from a conference last year


their single rotary use a Leading Deep Recess style bathtub. LDR is being used in several new rotary ventures by various companies as a means to increase compression for use with fuels other than gasoline; diesel , natural gas and also ethanol.

 

The ball is rolling folks!

 

The more companies researching the Rotary, the More quickly it will develop. Its the exact advantage that piston motors have had for decades. Im also a fan of Audi doing cause the only thing better than a Rotary powered sports car, is a rotary powered Sports car with Quattro. YES!

.... oh wait, its a Hybrid... nevermind.

 

RG and some others had talked about using a rotary as a generator in a series hybrid quite some time ago

 

With a rotary not really being terribly fuel efficient, I'm finding it hard to see the point in that design. Perhaps it revs very low since it doesn't have provide the power real-time... does the rotary have some strange boundary conditions where it starts to get very efficient at some point?

 

yes

 

"Single-Piston Rotary Engine"?

 

there once upon a time was a rotary motorcycle too. I just wish it was affordable to buy now lol. There is also a rotary go-kart engine.

 

Actually, there were 2. Norton & Suzuki both had a model with a rotary engine. Norton, within the past couple of years, has reintroduced one. There was a rotary powered snowmobile too.

 

I have the sachs powered snowmobile. rotarys are very fuel efficient when the "sweet spot" is acheived. 13b's have been used as commercial generators for years.
Audi earns the patents through old purchase of NSU by the VolksW group.

 

rotary go-karts, motorcycles and snowmobiles???

wow..

 

You are referring to the Frazier-Nash Namir here. Fantastic example of what is possible.


I was too....

 

There were even more rotary bikes I believe.

Paul.

 

You can buy a rotary powered bike by Norton now. You can also buy a rotary powered dolphin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfRzK...layer_embedded


http://www.seabreacher.com/seabreacher-arl

or shark

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz0Bb...layer_embedded

the Giugiaro Fraser-Nash Namir drivetrain was from AVL too I believe. I had seen a remark about it somewhere but haven't found it with my really quick and dirty search.

 

oh yeah and a rotary powered surfboard

http://www.aquaxtremes.com/

 

this is all really awesome stuff. I killed an hour on youtube looking at those dolphin things...awesome!!

 

Those dolphins are amazing... I can't even imagine how much fun it would be to drive one of those things.

 

The go-kart is the Aixro by Woelfle Engineering. They have an advertised 44 hp single rotor engine.

It's an interesting set up where the fuel+oil mixture also lubricates and cools the rotor and bearings by flowing sideways though the rotor first before entering the combustion chamber.

 

Cessna had a rotary powered aircraft out that was very affordable.

http://www.rotaryeng.net/

 

Sort of. The rotary is no different than any other internal combustion engine in that we ask it to work over a wide rpm and load range. When we do this we are also asking it to operate in many different efficiency zones and we design everything that goes with the engine from intake runners, to exhaust, intake and exhaust timing, tuning, etc to try to broaden this all out to make a good usable average across the range. However when you design an engine to run at only 1 rpm, or within a very narrow rpm range, now you don't worry about the other area and concentrate on efficiency in that small area and the results can be staggering. The typical rotary yields very high bsfc (brake specific fuel consumption) such as .58-.61 or more average. This is higher than the average piston engine. Looking back at old SAE papers from NASA and others from the 80's, when stratified charge was applied to those engines through direct injection, at a steady rpm they could obtain bsfc's of around .27 which is well less than half what it currently is. Indidentally this is around what the world's most efficient large diesel engines hit in efficiency.

When you design a generator to run at only 1 rpm, you can really make it efficient. The rotary has the advantage of being small which is why many are looking at it. When you make it very efficient, you also can make it very clean which is another benefit. In the 80's they had them so clean that they could pass emissions standards of the day (not sure how they'd fare now) without any emissions control devices. The law states you must have a cat and it must work though which meant they could not implement the idea due to a technicality on paper. Never ask the experts in the government to change something or suggest they got it wrong.

A rotary as a generator makes perfect sense. It can be made very effient, very clean, and very small and light. I don't see why anyone would think of any other engine. The rotary may be the ultimate generator engine!

 

with the exception of diesel. They might be heavier, but diesel is an extremely clean burning fuel. plus its heavier than air so it falls right to the ground. They are what 20:1 and 24:1 in the combustion chamber as well plus naturally a low rpm engine. Which is why they are so powerful yet listed at such a low rpm.

 

there is a big push in the area of small efficient generators for both civilian and military use.


like jaguar's concept some are opting for using microturbines http://www.bladonjets.com/

while others like Pratt and Whitney have moved away from the microturbine to wankel rotary engines

 

you mean a diesel fueled piston engine using the diesel cycle,yes?

there are rotaries running diesel fuel right now for various purposes but mainly as generators like the series hybrid use by AVL or the pure generator as with Pratt and Whitney