Engine Gnome

See also: Gnome

The rotary Driving for planes whose prototype is the range of the engines produced by the French company Gnome and the Rhone, designed at the beginning of the 20th century, aimed at reducing the weight, paramount characteristic for a Avion.

History

Perhaps starting from the ideas of two American precursors, Stephen Balzer and Adams-Farwell (see it), this principle was industrialized towards 1907 by the brothers Laurent and Louis Séguin under the Gnôme mark then improved by Louis Verdet in his company the Rhone before the two companies amalgamate. The German company used a license of it.

See also: Gnome and the Rhone

Use on plane

During the First World War, this type of engines was produced with tens of thousands of specimens and equipped in great number the planes of the two camps with powers of more than 100 ch for a weight lower than 150 kg.

  • the usual engines have their fixed body, the Piston S actuate a Vilebrequin which makes turn the tree moteur  ; on this one, a Stealing of Inertie regularizes the movement, and the driving propeller is attached.
  • the principle of the rotary engine is to reverse this architecture : it is the crankshaft which is fixed on the plane and the propeller is attached directly on the body, rotary, of the engine.

It results a profit from it from weight by two effects:

  • the rotation of the cylinders produces important draft around the cylinders, which makes it possible to increase cooling and to do without additional coolers
  • the removal of the wheel of inertia because the rotary body (cylinders) constitutes a mass of inertia, much more massive than a wheel-type.

The rotary engine must be balanced (its center of mass must be in the axis of the crankshaft), for that it is a radial engine .

Ransom of its advantages, the rotary engine presents a disadvantage: the mass of inertia of the engine is too important. Any attempt to reorientate the apparatus results consequently in a force of Précession (resulting from the gyroscopic effect or Force of Coriolis) considerable, very significant on very light planes like those of the time. For a dextrogyre propeller:

  • the plane bucks (resp: prick) when one wants to turn (resp on the left: right-hand side)
  • the plane turns left (respectively: right-hand side) when one starts to prick (resp: to pull up)
These effects were to be compensated by the pilot.

The article on the English plane Sopwith Camel which used a Gnome engine illustrates this disadvantage.

Among the multiple planes having used the rotary engines some have an article in French Wikipedia:

Other uses

A rotary engine (with 3 then 5 cylinders) was assembled in cars built of 1889 to 1913 par.

Engines of this type were used on motor bikes and cars in the years 1920 without durable success.

See too

  • Gnome and the rotary Rhone

  • Driving

External bonds

  • engines the Rhone of which the 9C

  • the saga of the rotary engine
  • 1916 Standard Monosoupape Gnome NR 160 ch (pdf)

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