Was the Wankel engine really a step forward though? I’m a gearhead who does all his own car maintenance, up to and including engine swaps in the past and retro-modding bigger turbos and aftermarket fuel injection systems into my cars (Datsuns in the latter case). That being said, I only know the very basics about rotary engines. I’ve always admired the Mazda RX’s from afar.
Mazda, who by no means makes a bad gasoline engine, could never get a rotary motor to last well or to have anywhere near decent fuel economy. Also, the rotary design was tried for a while in at least refrigeration compressor applications, where it blew up there a lot more than the other types of compressors as well.
The argument is, though I’m not qualified to assess it, that Wankel engines are simpler, smaller, more power dense and, if allowed time to develop, would be an improvement on the traditional ICE. It’s very difficult to assess where we would have ended up and a little by the by, given we need to move away from burning fossil fuel.
That said, do check out LiquidPiston’s evolution of the Wankel engine. It does sort of look like they’ve solved a number of issues a traditional Wankel engine has.
The basic problem with Wankels is that the geometry of the combustion chamber (such as it is) is constantly changing, which inevitably results in incomplete combustion compared to traditional ICEs. This leads to lowered fuel efficiency and greater emissions; the emissions problem is solved with an additional combustion chamber for the exhaust gases, but this consumes more fuel and lowers efficiency even more. It’s just a fundamental problem with the technology that no amount of development could ever fix.
Was the Wankel engine really a step forward though? I’m a gearhead who does all his own car maintenance, up to and including engine swaps in the past and retro-modding bigger turbos and aftermarket fuel injection systems into my cars (Datsuns in the latter case). That being said, I only know the very basics about rotary engines. I’ve always admired the Mazda RX’s from afar.
Mazda, who by no means makes a bad gasoline engine, could never get a rotary motor to last well or to have anywhere near decent fuel economy. Also, the rotary design was tried for a while in at least refrigeration compressor applications, where it blew up there a lot more than the other types of compressors as well.
The argument is, though I’m not qualified to assess it, that Wankel engines are simpler, smaller, more power dense and, if allowed time to develop, would be an improvement on the traditional ICE. It’s very difficult to assess where we would have ended up and a little by the by, given we need to move away from burning fossil fuel.
That said, do check out LiquidPiston’s evolution of the Wankel engine. It does sort of look like they’ve solved a number of issues a traditional Wankel engine has.
The basic problem with Wankels is that the geometry of the combustion chamber (such as it is) is constantly changing, which inevitably results in incomplete combustion compared to traditional ICEs. This leads to lowered fuel efficiency and greater emissions; the emissions problem is solved with an additional combustion chamber for the exhaust gases, but this consumes more fuel and lowers efficiency even more. It’s just a fundamental problem with the technology that no amount of development could ever fix.
It still has corners that need to have a moving seal. This is a huge issue.