Pistonless rotary engine

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This article is about pistonless design. For other uses of this term, see rotary engine
(disambiguation). For the early piston design, see rotary engine.
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Libralato engine

A pistonless rotary engine is an internal combustion engine that does not

use pistons in the way a reciprocating engine does. Designs vary widely but typically
involve one or more rotors, sometimes called rotary pistons. Although many
different designs have been constructed, only the Wankel engine has achieved
widespread adoption.
The term rotary combustion engine has been used as a name for these
engines[citation needed] to distinguish them from early (generally up to the early
1920s) aircraft engines and motorcycle engines also known as rotary engines.
However, both continue to be called rotary engines and only the context determines
which type is meant, whereas the "pistonless" prefix is less ambiguous.

Pistonless rotary engines[edit]

A pistonless rotary engine replaces the linear reciprocating motion of a piston with
more complex compression/expansion motions with the objective of improving some
aspect of the engine's operation, such as: higher efficiency thermodynamic cycles,
lower mechanical stress, lower vibration, higher compression, or less mechanical
complexity. As of 2006 the Wankel engine is the only successful pistonless rotary
engine, but many similar concepts have been proposed and are under various
stages of development. Examples of rotary engines include:
Production stage

 Wankel engine
 LiquidPiston engine
 Beauchamp Tower's nineteenth century spherical steam engine (in actual use as
a steam engine, but theoretically adaptable to use internal combustion)
Development stage

 Engineair engine
 Hamilton Walker engine
 Libralato rotary Atkinson cycle engine
 Quasiturbine
 RKM engine, German: RotationsKolbenMaschine
 Sarich orbital engine
 Trochilic engine
 Wave disk engine
 Nutating disc engine
Conceptual stage

 Gerotor engine
 Integrated Supersonic Component Engine