An Overview of the NASA Rotary Engine Research Program
Another illustration from this paper. This is a turbo 12A engine
with a very radical peripheral port. Note the low .45 BSFC at
4000 RPM with an EGT of 1700 degrees F. An Arkay turbo
charger was used... what ever that was. The EGT was 210 degrees over
the TIT rating for the turbine wheel however higher temp Inconel wheels
are now available. 190 HP was achieved at 7000 RPM and
10.1 psi boost. Too bad NASA did not further lean the engine
to further reduce the EGT as Tracy has discovered.
There is more about this test in SAE paper 820354.
I don't have this paper yet.
Too bad NASA is not still working on this. I guess rotary
engines were not considered politically correct because
of emissions no matter how stupid that concern was for
general aviation use. Believe it or not emissions were mentioned
in this paper.
NASA also did some instrumenting work on Mazda single rotor engines to explore
the thermal boundaries at high HP levels.
This work was done to verify a finite element analysis of the engine.
There probably are some papers out on this work if we can find them.
Unfortunately most of the NASA work was done on the dead end Curtiss Wright
engines.
Paul Lamar
The Aircraft Rotary Engine Newsletter. Powered by Linux.
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