[A] “The Rotary Engine is very simple. It’s a motor design that utilizes way less moving parts than it’s piston counterpart. The 13B-MSP Renesis (from the RX8) has the highest horsepower per displacement of any naturally aspirated motor produced from the Factory in America. For it’s size, the rotary packs a punch. For reference, the 13B from the RX8 is a 1.3 liter, and produces 232 horsepower. That equates to a ridiculous 178 horsepower per liter. In Theory, that would be equivalent to a 6.0 liter LS2 (from the Corvette) producing 1068 horsepower N/A from the factory.
Unlike Piston engines, Rotaries are almost immune to catastrophic failure. In a piston motor, you can have a piston seize and cause all kinds of damage, but in a Rotary motor, while the engine will lose power, it will continue to produce a limited amount of power until it finally dies.
Rotaries will also rev to the moon and still make power. For instance, A RX8 redlines at 9k and that’s where it makes peak power as well. Needless to say, the Rotary likes to stay high in the RPM range”.
[B] WANKEL ROTARY ENGINES: Isn’t the Wankel Rotary Engine technology dead? Haven’t they all disappeared?
“Far from it. In fact, Wankel rotary engines are very much alive and kicking and are currently being used in Automotive, Aerospace and Marine applications worldwide. While most people associate the Wankel rotary engines with past vehicles such as the Mazda RX7 and RX8 and Norton rotary motorcycles of the 1980s, the fact is that the Wankel rotary engines have and are still currently being used in everything used from snowmobiles to speedboats to aeroplanes and even space vehicle launches systems, therefore rather than a failed obsolete technologies Wankel engines have been hugely successful in niche applications. These are typically applications that require ultra-small form factor, very low weight and high power density.
One of the core markets for Wankel rotary engines over the last 30 to 40 years has been unmanned aerospace (RPVs and UAVs). The UK, in particular, has led the world in developing engines for this application and in doing so has demonstrated the Wankel Rotaries’ superiority over piston reciprocating engines. Rotaries typically outperform piston reciprocating engines in endurance, performance and simplicity of operation and maintenance; this has led to its selection for use in some of the world’s most successful UAV projects including Textron’s Shadow platforms and the UK’s own watchkeeper programme.
Advanced Innovative Engineering (AIE) as a company has built on this UK record of success in Wankel rotary engines and since its formation in 2012 developed a range of cutting-edge engines designed specifically to meet the needs of 21st Century OEMs, integrators and applications.
AIE’s ambitions do not solely lie in the growing unmanned sector though; our goal is to explore all potential applications in the aerospace and automotive and marine sectors that we believe can benefit from the Rotary engine’s unrivalled strengths”.
Inventor: Dr Felix Wankel