An orbital engine is a type of internal combustion engine, featuring rotary rather than reciprocating motion of its internal parts. It differs from the conceptually similar Wankel engine by using a shaped rotor that rolls around the interior of the engine, rather than having a trilobular rotor that spins "in place". Jump to: navigation, search A colorized automobile engine The internal combustion engine is a heat engine. ... Wankel Engine in Deutsches Museum Munich, Germany The Wankel rotary engine is a type of internal combustion engine, invented by German engineer Felix Wankel, which uses a rotor instead of reciprocating pistons. ...

Overview

The advantage is that there is no high-speed contact area with the engine walls, unlike in the Wankel where edge wear is an ongoing engineering problem. However, the combustion chambers are divided by blades which do have contact with both the walls and rotor.

The orbital engine was invented in 1972 by Ralph Sarich, an engineer from Perth, Australia, who worked on the concept for years without ever producing a production engine. A prototype was demonstrated, running on the bench with no load. Jump to: navigation, search 1972 was a leap year that started on a Saturday. ... For other cities named Perth, see Perth. ...

Problems

The Sarich Orbital engine turned out to have a number of fundamental flaws that kept it from becoming a practical engine. Amongst other things, there are key components that cannot be cooled, and other components that cannot be easily lubricated.

Rise and Fall

The company founded specifically to develop the orbital engine has given up work on the design. However, a related piece of the design, an air-assisted direct fuel injection system, continues to be developed by the company. The system allows for stratified charge injection under light loads, but can switch to traditional fuel injection operation (the "air assist") when more power is needed and normal stratified charge designs have problems. This injection system is claimed to have application to both four stroke and two-stroke engines. Fuel Injection is a method to precisely meter fuel into an internal combustion engine, where the fuel is then burned in air to produce heat. ... The four-stroke cycle of an internal combustion engine is the cycle most commonly used for automotive and industrial purposes today (cars and trucks, generators, etc). ... The two-stroke cycle of an internal combustion engine differs from the more common four-stroke cycle by having only two strokes (linear movements of the piston) instead of four, although the same four operations (intake, compression, power, exhaust) still occur. ...

The Orbital company also lives on doing consulting and research work for other people's engines.

See also

External links

• Orbital Corporation Limited.

• Another revolutionary engine from Revetec

• Australian patent 467415 describing the orbital engine.