Swiss and French researchers develop rotary engine aircraft
Swiss and French researchers are developing a novel rotary engine designed for all types of light airplanes and helicopters as part of a EUREKA project. Based on the Wankel rotary engine and combining new combustion chamber and electronic management technologies, the engine holds the promise of being a more reliable, high-powered, compact and smooth-running number than its competitor, the four-stroke piston engine. In addition, the rotary engine for small planes will run on widely available jet fuel and not the increasingly scarce 100-octane low-leaded (100 LL) avgas fuel. As the aviation industry currently accounts for 3% of annual greenhouse gas emissions and faces growing pressure to improve its environmental footprint, avgas fuel is expected to be banned completely for environmental reasons. The engine, based on German engineer Felix Wankel's designs, will have a rotor, replacing the need for crankshafts, pistons, valves and springs and reducing the number of moving parts to only two or three robust ones. With so few moving parts, less can wrong thus making the rotary engine far more reliable and safe. In addition, with the advent of modern automotive electronics solving timing and injection control issues, the results in fuel consumption make the engine as fuel efficient as piston engines. 'We decided to take the rotary engine block and build an aero engine around it that could be retrofitted to all aircraft,' explains Claude Geles, one of the partners in project from Mistral Engines. 'Mounting an engine in an aircraft is a delicate process and very expensive. We also had to design a suitable gearbox. Modern electronics now make it possible to have exact timing for fuel injection and ignition. The resulting engine looks like a turbine; it is not really a turbine but has many of its advantages, including a very low level of vibration, it is light-weight, compact and it is water cooled - making it possible to change power output very quickly without thermally stressing the engine,' Mr Geles added. The next step for the KERO project will be to obtain full Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification. Mr Geles is confident that certification will come within 18 months of the project ending, meaning the results could already be marketable by 2010. Then only the sky will be the limit.
Countries
Switzerland, France