Felix Wankel, a German motor engineer, invented the rotary piston engine which bears his name. Deprived of a university education when his family’s fortune vanished in the German inflation of 1919-20, he went in for car repairing and set up his own business in 1924 at the age of 22.
Soon he began work at designing a rotary piston engine, an idea which had attracted engineers since the invention of the stream engine. From 1934 to 1936 his research was backed by B.M.W. and from 1936 to 1945 by the German air force. In 1951 he established his own research institute and financed it by working as a consultant.
Wankel succeeded in discovering the secret of effective seals between the rotating pistons and the casing. He also discovered the geometrical form of an engine that could carry out the four-stroke cycle in one chamber without valves, giving a useful high compression ratio. His engine ran successfully for the first February, 1957. N.S.U. began limited production of Wankel engines for a car is 1963, and went into large-scale production in 1967.
The rotary piston engine challenges the usual internal combustion engine, using reciprocating pistons, because it offers reduced size, weight, vibration, noise and production costs for comparable thermal efficiency. It is considered suitable for industrial, marine and aeronautical uses.
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