Overcoming The Rotary Engine’s Biggest Flaw

The Liquid Piston engine is far superior .

What about a using a cylinder as an apex seal? It would simply roll around instead of directly scratching up the insides.
As for incomplete combustion, what if a two rotor design is used and the exhaust from the first rotor is fed into the second as the intake to be combusted there?

The cavity is its biggest drawback

In the days of the RO 80, when two RO 80 drivers met each other on the road, they always raised a number of fingers as a greeting, indicating how many engines had already been replaced.
The shape of the combustion chamber is the number ONE problem.

The engine still has poor thermodynamics, compared with a nice "square" piston engine.

The apex seals act like cutting blades which are constantly cutting the walls. 🤷🏻‍♂️
The rotary engine design is awesome but it’s it’s own death trap.

These engines needs to run at high RPM. The Mazda race car that won at Le Mans, had less gasoline consuption comparing to the opponents.

The big Wankel engine problem are emisiones and housing lubrication, not apex seal, they dump the combustión in the exhaust port still burning ! Thats why the big flame in the muffler. I wonder how Mazda is going to resolve that problem. 😂

Can't call the rotor a triangle because it's not made of 3 straight lines. It's actually called a reuleaux.

Can apex seals be replaced by inset roller bearings?

The biggest flaw is surface to volume ratio of the combustion chamber. This results in excess heat loss of the burning charge compared to a reciprocating piston engine. There is no cure for this basic geometric flaw. That's it, done, over, no recourse for the Wankel. I've followed this design from it's beginnings and also followed the history of NSU. NSU had some if the best engineers in the world and produced some world beating designs. These would include the VW Golf and the beginings of all modern Audis.

They're fine for niche use and that's where they'll remain.

It is a rounded triangle, that's crazy

These BOZOS are trying to engineer themselves out of a problem that exists because of a STUPID design. Wankel engines are dumb AF. There are much better rotary engine designs than this wobbly PoS. Someone needs to tell Mazda to take it behind the barn and put it out of its misery!

imagine how rotary engines would be now today if mazda wasnt forced to abandon it

How far can this vehicle travel on battery alone. Using 13 us gallons (10 uk gallons)to extend the range to 380 miles is rather poor and certainly nothing to write home about. If anyone is going to use a range extender then a wankle is definitely wrong most manufacturers are using conventional petrol piston which isn't great when they should be using diesel as that is the most efficient

in addition to the apex seal probs the side seals would stick due to carbon buildup from running at light loads, idling in traffic etc.
this lead to blow by causing loss of compression and oil leakage causing the plugs to oil up, making cold starts sometimes impossible without changing or cleaning the plugs. most rotary mechanics came to realize that a poor running engine just needed a good 10 minute blast down the freeway and it was good as new.

The range extender rotary is not coming to the USA, and probably not going into production.

The Ro80 did not redline at 9K. It was at 7K.

It is said the less the curve of the rotor, the better. I think this curve can be modified.

Biggest flaw still not overcome though? Misleading title

I think part of the issues with the apex seals was that there wasnt really a "cool" side like a piston ring had.
But the other thing that i have always found a bit odd about the rotor itself was the pockets for combustion. They were symmetrical and i feel like having the back half of the pocket just as deep as the front half worked against the forward movement in the later half of the ignition stage. I would be curious to see what would happen if the leading half of the pocket was deeper and tapered to flush towards the back half of the pocket.

Its biggest flaw is that it's not an electric motor. The time for a brilliant internal engine has past. We not only have to stop burning fossil fuels, we are now faced with having to draw CO2 back out of the atmosphere and lock it back up. We are in a hell of a mess. Stop wasting human resources making it worse. All our mental efforts need to be focused on reversing global warming.

I am starting to really like this channel! it is very informative and illustration are clear and beautiful!

I know nothing about any of this and even i can tell this is an awful design

And if you wanna see a maniac trying to get 2000 all wheel drive horsepower from a massive turbo 2.6L 4 Rotor go check out Rob Dahm.
He is experimenting like crazy also, different types and brands of apex seals rotor housings etc. great channel keeping the Wankel rotary engine alive

I was enthusiastic about this engine back in the early 70’s, and worked on my share. My then-wife fell in love with the RX7. Then I lost my interest when the things started having premature engine failures.

I think it’s a huge mistake for Mazda to try to resurrect this obsolete design.

Apex seals. Is this motors flaw.
❤ Toyota Corolla GR❤

Every manufacturer that thinks of making rotary engines should be forced to make a prototype rectangular piston 2-stroke engine that's also compliant with all modern emissions regulations.

piston engine go boing boing boing but the mazda goes hmmmmmmm

They are a waste of time and money. They make a fine boat anchor though

It's BIGGEST FLAw is that it made it off the drawing board. When theory and reality collide this engine loses 100% of the time.

Why rollers were not used at the corners? Rolling is better than sliding.i don't know.just curious.

So,they haven't.

Cylinders are better in every single way.

A small correction: the Apex seal does not move uniformly across the epitrochoid, it instead moves at a variable speed throughout the sweep of the rotor, further complicating the lubrication and sealing issues.

This might be the most disappointing video I've ever watched. It wasn't bad. And the promise of the video was technically fulfilled. But not in a way that anyone who loves Rotary Engines would ever be happy about.

I wonder if rollers (cogged) were put at seals wud Mazda have tried this ! the wall shud also be cogged too

I wish I was in the Mazda team 🙁

The liquid piston engine might actually move progress forward in rotory tech. They swapped the trocoid and triangle so not the rotor is trocoidal and the combustion banks form and triangle. The intake and exhaust flow through the rotor and allows for egr mixing and exhaust cooling. Not sure how the apex seals will hold up but maintaining the engine looks pretty straight forward.. Time will tell

I don't see what is the advantage of the rotary engine... the piston engine seems to do everything it does, minus the issues.... the only nice thing about is that you can ignite the exhaust and make some sick flames...

As I saw it written once; "It (the rotary engine) has the worst combustion chamber shape known to mankind!"

I had two RX3s back in the seventies no problems with the apex seals it was the coolant finding it's way into the combustion chambers that killed them on both of mine, much later on about ten years ago I restored two Suzuki RE5s rotary engine motorcycles, no problems at all and very reliable, regular oil change and maintenance is key to a long life Suzuki rotary engine.
See my Suzuki RE5M restoration.

Several tiny corrections: All engines are designed to burn some oil, wankel engines just burn more oil since both sides of the seals have combustion products that need to be taken out the exhaust that way. That these powerful engines are so compact adds to the problem of effective heat removal. The fact is they also need side seals along with those problematic tip seals.
Face it, this more than fifty year old experiment has failed to produce more than a high revving unidirectional rotating internal combustion engine with somewhat better fuel economy than it used to get, which was rather poor compared to the best piston engines. Combustion is done. Especially in automobiles. EVs are the future for a good reason.

The problem with these petrol driven range extenders, is that people get lazy and run the car on fuel alone and aside the use of the electric motor. The other issue is that the vehicles going to be quite a bit more expensive to maintain given that you’ve got drive trains for the electric drive train plus the Wankel engine.

Well I think it’s track performance to date pretty much puts these “inherent faults” in to perspective. 🇦🇺 Without Aussie tuners pioneering new tech it absolutely wouldn’t be such a powerhouse currently that’s for sure