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The most important parts of a rotary
engine are its triangular rotor and specially shaped chamber. The rotor moves so that its tips always touch the walls of the
chamber and divide the chamber into three areas. A different part of the combustion process takes place in each of the three
areas of the chamber. A rotary engine may have several rotors, each with its own chamber.
A rotary engine, like a
piston engine that operates on a four-stroke cycle, goes through four steps to complete one combustion cycle: (1) intake,
(2) compression, (3) expansion or power, and (4) exhaust. During the intake step, a combustible mixture of air and petrol
enters the chamber. Then the mixture is compressed. One or two spark plugs then ignite the mixture. The burning produces expanding
gases that move the rotor. The exhaust step pushes the burned gases from the engine.
In a piston engine, each piston
must move back and forth twice and stop four times to complete the cycle. A rotary engine operates continuously. It completes
three combustion cycles with each full rotation of its rotor. Each revolution of the rotor produces three power strokes. The
output shaft connected to the rotor makes three revolutions each time the rotor turns once. As a result, a single-rotor engine
produces one power stroke per turn of its output shaft. A piston engine, on the other hand, produces one power stroke every
other time a piston moves down its cylinder. A dual-rotor engine therefore generates the same number of power strokes as a
four-cylinder piston engine.
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