Is Atez a rotary engine? Which cars have rotary engines?

Currently on the market, most automobile engines use reciprocating engines.

A reciprocating engine, also known as a piston engine, is an engine that uses one or more pistons to convert pressure into rotational kinetic energy. It is also a machine that converts the kinetic energy of the piston into other mechanical energy. It mainly uses the heat energy generated by the combustion of fuel through the expansion of liquid (such as water) or gas to push the piston and convert heat energy into kinetic energy.

Is the Mazda Atenza engine a rotary engine?

It is not a rotary engine, but a direct injection electric motor developed by Skyactiv. Mazda only has a rotary engine in the RX-8.

The engine we are going to talk about today is the rotary engine, and this type of engine is only used by Mazda, and this engine is not used in all Mazda models, only the previous RX-7 and RX-8 are equipped with it! However, the RX-7 is more track-oriented, and the RX-8 is more street-oriented, which means that the RX-7 has higher performance than the RX-8! Although these two cars have been discontinued, at the Tokyo Motor Show in October 2015, Mazda released a concept car. Yes, you guessed it right, it is equipped with a rotary engine.

In the face of the global doubts about rotary engines, Mazda insisted on its own way, no matter what others said, it would not abandon or give up. This persistent attitude and spirit gave birth to the RX-7, which led Mazda to a brilliant future. Mazda did it.

What is a rotary engine?

The rotary engine is also called a piston rotary engine. We know that in an ordinary cylinder engine, the piston moves back and forth in the cylinder; while in a rotary engine, as the name suggests, the piston moves back and forth in the cylinder.

When the piston makes planetary motion in the cylinder, the volume of the working room changes periodically as the piston rotates, thereby completing the four "major events of life" of intake-compression-attack-exhaust. Each time the piston rotates once, it completes a cycle, and so on.

The rotary engine is also called the Wankel rotary engine, so it can be seen that its inventor is Wankel. The difference between the rotary engine and the ordinary engine is that it relies on a triangular "rotor" to rotate in an elliptical space to drive the middle shaft to rotate, which is different from the up and down movement of the piston in the piston engine. Because it directly performs circular motion, rather than converting linear motion into piston motion like a piston engine, it is more efficient. For example, the twin-rotor engine of the Mazda RX7, with a displacement of 1.3 and an original turbine, can already reach 255 horsepower.

However, due to the cyclic rotation of the rotor, sealing became a big problem, which was one of the reasons for the high fuel consumption at the beginning. Therefore, many manufacturers later abandoned this technology. Later, Mazda bought this technology and effectively solved the sealing problem after research and development. RX7 and RX8 and the Le Mans racing car 787B mentioned by the original poster are good examples. Due to Mazda's buyout, no other mass-produced cars use this technology. However, many cars have used this engine before, the most famous of which is Mercedes-Benz's C111 series, of which C111-2 was mass-produced, and C111-3 was used for racing, and once reached a maximum speed of 461KM/H, which is quite amazing.

Its advantages are simple structure, small size, high power, and stable operation at high speed. Therefore, many years ago, it was once called black technology, and many car manufacturers competed to develop rotary engines. But now, it is basically dead, and only Mazda RX-8 still uses it.

Which cars have rotary engines now?

Now only Mazda is still insisting on developing the twin-rotor engine, but due to technical reasons and the disadvantages of the rotary engine, Mazda only installed the twin-rotor engine on the mass-produced RX-8. But now research shows that the rotary engine has excellent performance in hydrogen power. Many large car manufacturers have also shown interest in this, so the potential of the rotary engine is also very large! Answer supplement: Citroen used it in 1964, but due to various social and technical reasons at the time, manufacturers equipped with rotary engines withdrew one after another.

However, Mazda has been using it in cars since 1967 and has persisted in doing so. Mazda paid a considerable price for this. In the late 1970s, it launched the RX-7 sports car and entered the US market. Now it has launched the RX-8 sports car. So far, Mazda is the only car equipped with a rotary engine.

Mazda is the only company in the world that produces and sells rotary engine cars.

Compact structure and high output

Smaller in size than conventional engines

1Low vibration and low noise

The up and down movement of the piston in a traditional engine is difficult to balance, but the rotor, eccentric shaft, flywheel and components of a rotary engine rotate in the same direction, making noise and vibration smaller.

2 Balance torque characteristics

The traditional engine produces energy during the power stroke, while the other three strokes - intake, compression, and exhaust - do not produce energy. The rotary engine has three power strokes in each rotation cycle, and the intervals between the power strokes are much shorter, which greatly reduces the vibration and torque fluctuation of the engine.

3. Fewer components

The rotor of a rotary engine plays the role of the piston, connecting rod, and valve of a traditional engine, so it has fewer parts and is much smaller in size.

The only Mazda rotary engine car currently on sale is the RX-8, which has a 1.3-liter rotary engine.

The operating characteristics of the rotary engine are:

While the center of the triangular rotor revolves around the center of the output shaft, the triangular rotor itself rotates around its center. When the triangular rotor rotates, the inner gear ring centered on the center of the triangular rotor meshes with the gear centered on the center of the output shaft. The gear is fixed on the cylinder body and does not rotate. The ratio of the number of teeth of the inner gear ring to the gear is 3:2. The above-mentioned motion relationship makes the motion trajectory of the vertex of the triangular rotor (i.e. the shape of the cylinder wall) resemble an "8" shape.

The triangular rotor divides the cylinder into three independent spaces, and the three spaces complete intake, compression, crankshaft and exhaust respectively. The triangular rotor rotates one circle, and the engine ignites three times. Due to the above motion relationship, the output shaft's rotation speed is three times the rotor's rotation speed, which is completely different from the 1:1 motion relationship between the piston and the crankshaft of a reciprocating engine.

Compared with reciprocating engines, rotary engines eliminate useless linear motion, so rotary engines of the same power are smaller in size, lighter in weight, and have lower vibration and noise, which is a great advantage. However, since rotary engines are not very similar to traditional engines from production and assembly to maintenance and repair, the development cost is high. What is even more unacceptable is that the fuel consumption of rotary engines is very high, which is also the main technical problem that cannot be overcome for the time being. In addition, the reciprocating piston engine has significantly improved in power, weight, emissions, energy consumption, etc. compared with the past, and the rotary engine has no obvious advantages, so major automobile companies have no enthusiasm to develop and utilize it.