Fixed shaft - Rotating cylinders

Check out this thread.....

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/6415#newcomments

see this link to see an rotary airplane engine http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/Le_Rhone_9C.jpg/240px-Le_Rhone_9C.jpg&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_engine&h=244&w=240&sz=23&hl=en&start=6&tbnid=61mSJbTC_YIzPM:&tbnh=110&tbnw=108&prev=/images%3Fq%3Drotary%2Bengine%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den

Thanks for the pics.

Are there any detail drawings?

How did they couple fuel supply?

Carburetor or fuel injection?

BIKE: Was it not dangerous or painfully to drive?

I searched the web for "Gnome engine" and found some interesting data.

There was a motorcycle built in germany in the 20's that had a similar engine. It incorporated a 5 cylinder radial engine, built into the front wheel. The motorcycle was called a Megola. The crankshaft served as a front axle, and the engine rotated around the crank. It had many unusual design features, no transmission, and featured a stamped metal frame. Very rare machine.

The French built the "Gnome" series and the Germans had the "Oberousel" (sp). Throttle was on or off, if you ever see some film footage of restored WWI aircraft (and they still have the rotary engine and not had it replaced with a radial engine) you will see (hear) this phenomenon. Very inefficient and as they demand for horsepower grew the engines got larger with more centrifugal force, thus making the control of the airplane more difficult.

The best animation of a fixed shaft radial piston engine.

www.keveney.com/gnome.html

Good Morning Hendrik: If you're REALLY interested in these, and similar, engines, you can see them in flight. The Cole Palen Aerodrome, in Rhinebeck, New York, has an amazing collection of airplanes, engines and cars of that era and has airshows through the summer, beginning in June this year. Check out: http://www.oldrhinebeck.org/ The shows and ground displays are unforgettable. I could camp out there all summer, except that my wife would miss me. Probably. DickL

The Gnome engine worked quite well. The idea was that the rotating cylinders would keep the air flowing over the cooling fins. Cooling was a big problem in engines because the alloys available couldn't take the heat.

Of course the torque reaction caused a fighter aircraft built around such an engine to turn quickly in the direction of the torque reaction, but very sluggishly in the other direction. This limited the pilots options, but the plane could out turn just about anything to the one direction. Unfortunately once the attackers caught on to this they would line up for the turn and the results were bad for the pilot trying to shake an attack. So the rotating engine was pretty much history by the end of WWI

See "claymoor's" thread, "Shaft stays put, Motor spins". at that same forum.

Gnome, LeRohn Siemens and others did it. Worked pretty well considering the complexities involved such as Ignition, fuel supply and carburization, to name a few, And the years they were made.

In contradiction to what has been said in the AM thread, the main reason for doing this, was not cooling but rather to achieve a "Fly Wheel" effect, caused by the heavy engine block, so a smaller engine could be used, while maintaining constant propeller RPM under rapidly changing engine loads in a dog fight.

Wangito.

Possibly, but it made them hard to maneuver due to gyroscopic effects.

Those birds were a real handful to fly. I saw the Fokker triplane fly at Rhinebeck

some years ago, and the 'P` factor required that little rudder to be pushed to

the stops just to keep it straight on take-off.

"Were a real handful to fly..."

Tell me about it... A few years ago we built a Bristol M1C full scale replica for the Chilean air force museum. I couldn't find the real 9 cylinders rotary Le Rohn engine, so I have installed a Scarab engine (9 cylinder Radial) instead. I flew it only once and that was scary. another pilot did the rest of the test flights, we both suffered from VVTRS ( Very Very Tight Rectum Syndrome). Nobody flew it ever since.

Wangito.