FELIX WANKEL

Wankel was born on 13 August 1902 in Lahr in what was then the Grand
Duchy of Baden in the Upper Rhine Plain of present-day southwestern
Germany. He was the only son of Gerty Wankel and Rudolf Wankel, a forest
assessor. His father died in World War I. Thereafter, the family moved to
Heidelberg. He went to high schools in Donaueschingen, Heidelberg,
and Weinheim, and left school without Abitur in 1921. He learned the trade of
purchaser at the Carl Winter Press in Heidelberg and worked for the
publishing house until June 1926. He and some friends had already run an
unofficial afterwork machine shop in a backyard shed in Heidelberg since
1924. Wankel now determined to receive unemployment benefits and to focus
on the machine shop. One of his friends, who had graduated from university,
gave his name and transformed the shop into an official garage
for DKW and Cleveland motor bikes in 1927, where Wankel worked from time
to time until his arrest in 1933.

Wankel was gifted since childhood with an ingenious spatial imagination and
became interested in the world of machines, especially combustion engines.
After his mother was widowed, Wankel could not afford university education or
even an apprenticeship. He was, however, able to teach himself technical
subjects. At age 17 he told friends that he had dreamt of constructing a car
with "a new type of engine, half turbine, half reciprocating. It is my invention!".
True to this prediction, he conceived the Wankel engine in 1924 and won his
first patent in 1929.
 WANKEL ENGINE

The Wankel engine is a type of internal combustion engine using

an eccentric rotary design to convert pressure into rotating motion. All parts
rotate consistently in one direction, as opposed to the common reciprocating
piston engine, which has pistons violently changing direction. In contrast to the
more common reciprocating piston designs, the Wankel engine delivers
advantages of simplicity, smoothness, compactness, high revolutions per
minute, and a high power-to-weight ratio.

The engine is commonly referred to as a rotary engine, although this name

also applies to other completely different designs, primarily aircraft engines
with their cylinders arranged in a circular fashion around the crankshaft. The
four-stage cycle of intake, compression, ignition, and exhaust occur each
revolution at each of the three rotor tips moving inside the oval-
like epitrochoid-shaped housing, enabling the three power pulses per rotor
revolution. The rotor is similar in shape to a Reuleaux triangle with the sides
somewhat flatter.