Pistonless rotary engine

This article is about pistonless design. For other uses of this term, see rotary engine (disambiguation). For the early piston design, see rotary engine.

Libralato engine

A pistonless rotary engine is an internal combustion engine that does not use pistons in the way a reciprocating engine does, but instead uses one or more rotors, sometimes called rotary pistons. An example of a pistonless rotary engine is the Wankel engine.

The term rotary combustion engine has been suggested as an alternative name for these engines to distinguish them from early (generally up to the early 1920s) aircraft engines and motorcycle engines also known as rotary engines. However, both continue to be called rotary engines and only the context determines which type is meant.

Pistonless rotary engines

The basic concept of a pistonless rotary engine avoids the reciprocating motion of the piston with its inherent vibration and rotational-speed-related mechanical stress. As of 2006 the Wankel engine is the only successful pistonless rotary engine, but many similar concepts have been proposed and are under various stages of development. Examples of rotary engines include:

Production stage

• Beauchamp Tower's nineteenth century spherical steam engine (theoretically adaptable to use internal combustion)
• The Wankel engine

Development stage

• The Engineair engine
• The Liquidpiston engine
• The Hamilton Walker engine
• The Libralato rotary Atkinson cycle engine
• The Quasiturbine
• The Ramgen Integrated Supersonic Component Engine
• The RKM engine, Template:Lang-de
• The Sarich orbital engine
• The Trochilic engine
• The Wave disk engine

Conceptual stage

• The Gerotor engine

See also

• Range extender (vehicle)

Further reading

• Jan P. Norbye: 'Rivals to the Wankel: A Roundup of Rotary Engines', Popular Science, Jan 1967, pp 80–85.