| The Breakroom > The Water Cooler |
| Historic Aircraft: Sopwith Camel & Spitfire |
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| AdeV:
Pete, This link might help: http://www.animatedengines.com/gnome.html The bit I can't work out is, what opens the exhaust valve? I presume there's a cam/pushrod/rocker somewhere. |
| BillTodd:
--- Quote ---Were rotary aero-engines two-stroke or four-stroke? --- End quote --- Four stroke The only rotary two stroke I can think of, is Cecil Hughes' is superbly designed double-ended curved cylinder engine (you really have to read the patent to appreciate the engineering). It used an external blower for the scavenging air. http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/unusualICeng/rotblocIC/rotblocIC.htm#selwood --- Quote ---How was the fuel fed to the cylinders? I can't see that crank-case induction would work, surely the displacement of all the pistons would cancel out? --- End quote --- In the case of the Gnome (above) it was from the crank case, through a valve in the piston (operated by cylinder vacuum during the induction stroke - I'm not sure how they balanced the centrifugal force on the valve). Other engines had external pipe work to the rear of the engine where a toroidal chamber around the crank distributed the mixture to the all the cylinders. The carb fed the chamber either, via another annular chamber with a rotating seal to the toriodal one, or via a hollow crank shaft. |
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