Hey guys. My professor wants me to write a compare and contrast essay for his class, so I decided to write one on the Rotary engine vs. piston engines. I know a fair ammount on both engines, but putting it into words is giving me a problem. If anyone has any info or sites about this subject I'd really apperciate it. Thanks .



- MK

You know you wanna help me.. https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...IR#>/smile.png



- MK

Piston engine, unfortunately, will come out the victor. It has 200 years and trillions of dollars of backing behind it while the rotary has had 40 years of semi-serious backing by some magnufactures and than ultimately one magnufacturer up to this day.



Such an unrefined engine can give piston engines such a run for their money...

defprun is spot on, but I would use it to my advantage. Potentially rotarys are far superior to piston engines, for reasons like producing huge hp/litre far more reliably than any piston engine could, lower mass of inertia (less heavy moving parts) means more responsive and economical engine, less vibration etc.



Mark

IMO, the piston engine is a primitive design idea (let's make gas and air explode in a can, hyuck, hyuck) that has been highly refined. The rotary engine is an elegant design that excels despite far less time and money spent on refinement.



Simplicity is the key to good design. When its sitting next to a rotary, a piston engine looks like something drawn up by Rube Goldberg.

Pistons engines are 100,000X more valuable in today's world than rotary engines. Not everyone drives tiny sports cars, you know.

If you're having writer's block, just start writing what you know about each engine.

Then you'll start to see how they are alike, and how they are different, all from your brain in your own words. Start crude, and just rearrange all the information so that it moves in a direction with general purpose, come up with transitions between topics, form a conclusion (it helps if you have a goal, like which will be more prevalent in the future of internal combustion, or which is most efficient), and you should have a nice paper. This of course assuming you know quite a bit about each type of engine to begin with.

read the book by nicholas faith.. wankel, a revolutionary story behind the rotary engine.. it'll help out a lot on the rotary side.. interesting book

No one is going to dispute that. However, just because the only viable rotary engine in existence is best suited to propelling small sports cars doesn't mean that the technology isn't adaptable to other applications.

There is a few old old books on rotary engines during the 70s, check them out at your local library. I can't remember the exact name or author. Reading the books from that era made the rotary seem like the engine of the future, read them it will give you a good insight as why it was better than pistons during that period and before. Especially with hp figures.