Duke Engines' incredibly compact, lightweight valveless axial engine

www.gizmag.com ^ | September 3, 2014 | By Loz Blain

[Ouderkirk]

It is very similar to a Wankle in many ways. And it will suffer from the same problems like the Wankle had with the Apex seals for the rotors at the seal for the top of the combustion chamber.

They are talking power and weight, but I don’t see any talk about reliability/longevity.

The Wankle had good power to weight too,and the apex seals were and are problematic.

I like this thing in concept. but you have an issue with combustion chamber shapes, flame front travel, and plug timing. plus many others I haven’s talked about. I can see where you can introduce two plates to change the valve timing/overlap, but again, seals are going to be an issue. I don’t see it replacing the poppet valve and bump-stick for the foreseeable future.

[ConservativeMind]

Fascinating.

[BwanaNdege]

Swashplate drive as used in the Waterbury Speed Gear (used to move naval gun turrets giving steady aim even in a rolling sea) and also in the old GM axial automobile A/C compressors.

[grey_whiskers]

Is it 4 cycle, ie: suck,squeeze, bang, and blow or something different?

You made it sound NSFW for a minute...

[Ozark Tom]

http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/liquidpiston-small-efficient-rotary-engine-1205

http://papers.sae.org/2014-32-0104/

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/06/lightweight-and-quiet-power-to-enable.html

http://liquidpiston.com/company/

[FreedomPoster]

I assume you’ve looked into the HPA VW TDI conversions?

http://www.cotybuilt.com/index.html

[DungeonMaster]

Then, one of the Wankel’s biggest shortcomings turned out to be its relatively-poor MPG.

Yes, I was wondering about efficiency and how well it would scale up. I miss piston powered airplanes. I also wondered about durability, of course.