THE SIMPLE ROTARY ENGINE

     Felix Wankel, a German engineer, is the inventor of the commonly known rotary engine.  This engine is an internal combustion engine that uses a rotor instead of the typical cylindrical piston in most engines today.  Wankel had a vision to make an uncommon engine that was more efficient than the typical engine.  He first started to think and build this engine in 1924.


Advantages

      Rotary engines have some distinct characteristics which differentiates them from other engines. They do not have pistons. Pistons engines come with compression and ignition system. A rotary engine bypasses all of that, and accomplishes such tasks all in one rotation. It has a rotational triangular- shaped rotor which revolves around and completes its tasks in one swing.

    Simplicity is one advantage of the rotary engine. It has many fewer parts than piston engines and yet has more power in comparative terms. For instance 13B from RX8 is a 1.3 liter rotary engine, and yet it produces enough power to rival a 6.0 liter piston engine from Corvette. In this example, the 1.3 liter rotary engine produces 232 horsepower, compared to 178 horsepower from the Corvette 6.0 liter piston engine.

Disadvantages

    Rotary engines have a major disadvantage when it comes to gas mileage. They use more gas than piston engines. They also burn comparatively more oil than piston engines. Part of the reason is that the rotary engine is designed to mix a small portion of oil with gas for lubrication purposes. A typical rotary engine gets average mileage of about 25 miles per gallon. It is also important to point out that rotary engines could not operate on diesel fuel due to its design.