High-power rotary engine with varaiable compression ratio

Abstract

A rotary engine having two interdigitated rotors (FIGS. 1a, 1b, or 1c) each of which has two radial vanes dividing a cylindrical cavity in the liquid-cooled rotor housing (11 in FIG. 2) into four chambers. The rotors are coupled to a planetary gear system (FIG. 2 ) by connecting rods (19 and 29) to planet gears (22 and 32) that rotate about a fixed sun gear (27) having a diameter twice the diameter of the planet gears. During one revolution of the output shaft (25), which is connected to the planet gear cage (24), the rotors alternately speed up and slow down, causing the size of each of the four chambers to vary from a maximum size to a minimum size twice. As the chambers rotate about the axis of the cylindrical cavity, they pass an inlet port (13), outlet port (14) and ignition plug port (15) contained in the housing so that intake, compression, explosion and exhaustion occurs in each chamber for one revolution of the output shaft. A passageway (39) containing an adjustable, pressure-sensitive valve (40) vents the compression chamber to the intake chamber to allow the compression ratio to be varied and to provide [a compression] an expansion ratio that exceeds the [expansion] compression ratio.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.