Rotary engine

It is known that the biggest drawbacks of the traditional internal combustion engine is the low overall efficiency, which consists in the low use of the energy contained in the fuel. The remedy for this was to be an engine with a rotating piston.

The advantages of such an engine were to be, among other things, small size, light weight and simple design. The idea of ​​such an engine was developed during the interwar period of the XNUMXth century. Designing an engine with a rotating piston seemed like a simple matter, but practice has shown the opposite.

The first practical rotary engine was built only in 1960 by the German Felix Wankel. Soon this engine began to be used in motorcycles and cars of the German production NSU. Despite numerous attempts, it turned out that a simple idea in practice causes many difficulties, incl. during production, it was not possible to produce a sufficiently strong piston seal.

Another disadvantage of this engine was the high consumption of gasoline. When attention was paid to protecting the environment, it turned out that exhaust gases contain many carcinogenic hydrocarbons.

Currently, only the Japanese Mazda practically uses and continues to improve the Wankel engine in their RX sports cars. This vehicle is powered by a 2 cc 1308-chamber rotary engine. The current model, designated RX8, is powered by a newly developed 250 hp Renesis engine. at 8.500 rpm.