Francois St-Germain wrote:
Hi Paul please take a look at it.
http://ultralightnews.com/airshows/sunfun99/wankel.html
I think it will be interesting!
Frank
Four stroke Wankel aircraft engine to be built in Canada!
There is a rumour circulating in the industry, that Rotax may in the near future stop supplying engines to the ultralight industry. While this is just a
rumour, it is good to see that several other ultralight engine manufacturers are either entering the market or improving their products.
Over 35 years ago, there was a four stroke engine used in snowmobiles called the Wankel. While the engine had great potential, it also had numerous
problems one of these being heat. But technology has advanced a great deal in the past 35 years, and it appears with this advance the problems
associated with the Wankel engine had been eliminated.
This year at Sun N Fun, at Canadian company Rotor Power Corporation Inc, had at display featuring the Wankel engine from Germany. According to
George Payne the Canadian distributor Wankel engines will soon be produced from a facility at the Oshawa airport. According to George, Wankel
originally licensed Mazda, to produce the Mazda rotary engine. While the Mazda rotary engine, uses the same principles as the Wankel engine it is a
totally different design.
For those not familiar and with the rotary engine I will try to give you a very simple explanation. The piston engine has a crankshaft connected to
pistons that move up and down in cylinders, at the top of each stroke the piston is forced by an explosion back down the cylinder. Since the piston and
crankshaft have to stop at the top and bottom of each stroke at great deal of vibration is created.
A Wankel engine has a disk,shaped like a triangle, that rotates in a circle, thus there is no top and bottom of the stroke, which practically eliminates
vibration. In fact the demonstration model run at the show had no rubber mounts to dampen the vibration at all. Yet looking at the engine you could see
no vibration, and when reached out and touch the engine I could not feel any vibration.
The Wankel is a four stroke engine, and it is liquid cooled, the aircraft Wankel engines are unique in that they use both a charged oil lubrication system
and that charged water cooled system. These two cooling systems, plus the use of nickosil coating have eliminated the heating problem which plagued
the early Wankel design.
During the interview with the factor representative from Germany for Wankel the theme, reliability durability, and dependability were stressed. These
have apparently been reached by the use of modern materials, a purpose built aircraft engine, which has had its rpm range limited to 6000 rpm. This
vs. the 7500 to 12,000 rpm is the engine is capable of producing in other applications.
The Wankel engine comes to the customer with dual ignition, fuel injection, exhaust system, electric start, alternator with several cooling systems
available depending on aircraft make and model. The reduction drive system is a belt drive available in two ratios a 2 to 1 reduction and a 3 to 1 ratio.
Currently there are five distributors and service centers available for the engine. The factory recommended TBO is 2000 hours or three years. When
asked how many of the current aircraft Wankel engines have reached 2000 hours the factory representative indicated that the factory aircraft has just
over 1600 hours on it, with two other aircraft with over 1000 hours on them. He also reported that these engines have had no problems to date.
Another example the factory representative gave was that there are several go cart racing teams in Europe using the Wankel engine who have over
400 hours of racing time on them, with the engines having never been taken apart. This compared to the piston engines that they formerly used where
they had to be disassembled every 5 to 10 hours.
Well now for the tough question. How much money? After all there are only seven moving parts in Wankel engine! Well you had better sit down. The
35 hp single rotary engine which weighs 79 pounds was quoted at $6300 American! The 75 hp twin rotor Wankel engine which weighs in at 109
pounds was priced at $8850 U.S. dollars.
It was pointed out that while the single rotor engine was quite a bit more expensive than say a 2 stroke 447, the investment was in a four stroke engine,
with a longer life cycle, better fuel economy and reliability.
It should also be noted that the 75 hp version was comparable in price to a 912 Rotax with fewer moving parts, fuel injection, and a lighter weight.
For more information contact
George Payne
Rotor Power Corporation
Oshawa Airport--
Sounds like they bought the Wankel GmbH of Germany tooling. Good news. Hope they pull
it off. IMHO there is a large market out there for ultralight engines.
Paul Lamar
The AirCraft Rotary Engine NewsLetter. Powered by Linux.
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