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[Rods2]

Rotary engines have many advantages, but the Wankel engine had a real weakness with it's low efficiency and rotor tip wear. A US company has produced a new design with no rotor tips and very high thermal efficiency which are ideally suited to small applications like power tools and generators. So will we be using rotary powered tools in the future and would they also be suitable for driving a generator in a hybrid car?

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a8174/liquidpistons-hyper-efficient-engine-turning-the-rotary-inside-out-13817971/

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a15233/liquidpiston-darpa-contract/?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1457_172925453

[minifreek]

Wow....!!!

seriously... thats a hell of an engine ....

[Gaffers]

Clever design but I can still see that piston getting a lot of wear without the fuel being mixed with oil to lubricate.

[ronnyd]

I think i will tell my neighbour about this as he has a dead RX-8 on his drive

[chrisgixer]

http://youtu.be/0e785YnDmq0

[Kevin Wood]

Hmm. It still has tip seals, as far as I can see, but they are just on the stator instead of the rotor.

The increase in compression is a decent step forwards, but there is also an extra stage of transferring the charge between the cavities in the rotor and the combustion chamber which might affect the efficiency and how well it can breathe, so it might not be the rev happy monster that the original wankel was.

Still, it's good to see someone thinking outside the box on engine design. I'd love a practical rotary engine.

[chrisgixer]

Indeed....I envisaged the wankel being developed to the point it would only need to be 500cc eventually, by making all three chambers capable of combustion intake and exhaust as both the stator and rotor rotate in opposite directions.... Or some other sort of clever outside the box thinking, non of which I'm capable of even starting to understand how that could possibly be made to work. I'm f course.