Subject: Port sizes and pipe sizes.
From: ACRE
Date: 12/28/2004, 8:08 PM


 Notice the length of the pipe on the piston engine was
50 inches
long for 2500 RPM and the optimum length on the Le Mans engine for 6000
RPM
was 16 inches long.

We are nowhere near a workable theory for rotary engines. I am just
pointing out
some similarities with piston engines. Don't try to read something into
this that
is not there.  All of this is empirical. Determined by extensive
experiment on one piston engine of a given bore and stroke. The work
done
by Taylor
is sure to scale only to piston engines. You keep sounding like you are
going to come
with a magical number for the pipe diameter and length. We have a long
way
to go
to come up with a workable theory for rotary engines. Forget it. The
only
way you are
going to do that is by extensive experimentation on a dyno. Build the
dyno.

Why bother anyway? The solution is staring you in the face. Mazda has
done
it for
you. Nobody anywhere has a built a rotary engine with something other
than 2 inch p-port pipes that comes close to the 240 HP at 6000 RPM
achieved by the
the Le Mans engine. Copy the Le Mans engine exactly. What is it about
this
that is
so hard to understand.


BTW Why mess with a ancient 12A engine? It is no lighter than a 13B.

Paul Lamar

One of the major differences involved with intake tuning for a Wankel is
the
shape
and duration of the "suction" pulse as related to the frequency of those
pulses.

The Wankel case is analogous to hooking all the intakes to a single pipe
for a 3 cylinder piston four stroke.  This probably has the effect of
reducing
the "sharpness" of the resonant peak. Obviously tuning works, as evidenced
by the Le Mans engine. Resonant devices are characterized by a "Q" factor
of resonant efficiency - the opposite of damping. Both "organ pipe" modes
and cavity modes (Helmholtz cavities) can be used to support resonance
(or disonance - untuned wave damping") .

If you look at the ranks in a pipe
organ you can see that length/diameter ratios are a factor in the "Q". A
short
length to diameter ratio has poor "Q" since it begins to support other
modes
such as radial and circumferential to the detriment of the longitudinal
that
you are trying to use - ie larger diameter is not always better.
That is my nickel on tuned pipes - for whatever it is worth (we get
exposed
to a bit of this sort of thing when trying to suppress destructive
acoustic
instabilities in rocket combustion) - Vance


Vance,
 It's been a very long time since I've seen anyone use 'Helmholtz' in a
sentence!

One additional piece that I remember from a physics class a long time
ago...might apply?  In the 'organ pipe' mode, if the diameter of the pipe is
smaller than the wavelength of interest, the end of the pipe where the wave
enters acts as a 'point source' for the wave - as if the wave originates at
the end of the pipe and not somewhere else in space.  If the diameter of the
pipe is larger than the wavelength, then the pipe acts more like a 'wave
guide' and just 'channels' a wave that originates somewhere else in the
system.

I don't know enough about the wavelength of the pulses in the intake system,
but could it be possible that the folks using smaller pipes are getting more
benefit from the tuning effects than someone that selects intake plumbing
too large?  I don't know that I've seen the frequencies discussed here.

Andy Hecker

 
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