M. Laurent Seguin, the inventor of the Gnome rotary aero engine, provided as great a stimulus to aviation as any that was given anterior to the war period, and brought about a great advance in mechanical flight, since these well-made engines gave a high-power output for their weight, and were extremely smooth in running. In the rotary design the crankshaft of the engine is stationary, and the cylinders, crank case, and all their adherent parts rotate; the working is thus exactly opposite in principle to that of the radial type of aero engine, and the advantage of the rotary lies in the considerable flywheel effect produced by the revolving cylinders, with consequent evenness of torque. Another advantage is that air-cooling, adopted in all the Gnome engines, is rendered much more effective by the rotation of the cylinders, though there is a tendency to distortion through the leading side of each cylinder being more efficiently cooled than the opposite side; advocates of other types are prone to claim that the air resistance to the revolving cylinders absorbs some 10 per cent of the power developed by the rotary engine, but that has not prevented the rotary from attaining to great popularity as a prime mover.

There were, in the list of aero engines compiled in 1910, five rotary engines included, all air-cooled. Three429 of these were Gnome engines, and two of the make known as ‘International.’ They ranged from 21·5 to 123 horse-power, the latter being rated at only 1·8 lbs. weight per brake horse-power, and having fourteen cylinders, 4·33 inches in diameter by 4·7 inches stroke. By 1914 forty-three different sizes and types of rotary engine were being constructed, and in 1913 five rotary type engines were entered for the series of aeroplane engine trials held in Germany. Minor defects ruled out four of these, and only the German Bayerischer Motoren Flugzeugwerke completed the seven-hour test prescribed for competing engines. Its large fuel consumption barred this engine from the final trials, the consumption being some 0·95 pints per horse-power per hour. The consumption of lubricating oil, also was excessive, standing at 0·123 pint per horse-power per hour. The engine gave 37·5 effective horse-power during its trial, and the loss due to air resistance was 4·6 horse-power, about 11 per cent. The accompanying drawing shows the construction of the engine, in which the seven cylinders are arranged radially on the crank case; the method of connecting the pistons to the crank pins can be seen. The mixture is drawn through the crank chamber, and to enter the cylinder it passes through the two automatic valves in the crown of the piston; the exhaust valves are situated in the tops of the cylinders, and are actuated by cams and push-rods. Cooling of the cylinder is assisted by the radial rings, and the diameter of these rings is increased round the hottest part of the cylinder. When long flights are undertaken the advantage of the light weight of this engine is more than counterbalanced by its high fuel and lubricating oil consumption, but there are other430 makes which are much better than this seven-cylinder German in respect of this.
Bayerischer 7 Cylinder Rotary Engine, 1913.

Rotation of the cylinders in engines of this type is produced by the side pressure of the pistons on the cylinder walls, and in order to prevent this pressure from becoming abnormally large it is necessary to keep the weight of the piston as low as possible, as the pressure is produced by the tangential acceleration and retardation of the piston. On the upward stroke the circumferential velocity of the piston is rapidly increased, which causes it to exert a considerable tangential pressure on the side of the cylinder, and on the return stroke there is a431 corresponding retarding effect due to the reduction of the circumferential velocity of the piston. These side pressures cause an appreciable increase in the temperatures of the cylinders and pistons, which makes it necessary to keep the power rating of the engines fairly low.

Seguin designed his first Gnome rotary as a 34 horse-power engine when run at a speed of 1,300 revolutions per minute. It had five cylinders, and the weight was 3·9 lbs. per horse-power. A seven-cylinder model soon displaced this first engine, and this latter, with a total weight of 165 lbs., gave 61·5 horse-power. The cylinders were machined out of solid nickel chrome-steel ingots, and the machining was carried out so that the cylinder walls were under ? of an inch in thickness. The pistons were cast-iron, fitted each with two rings, and the automatic inlet valve to the cylinder was placed in the crown of the piston. The connecting rods, of ‘H’ section, were of nickel chrome-steel, and the large end of one rod, known as the ‘master-rod’ embraced the crank pin; on the end of this rod six hollow steel pins were carried, and to these the remaining six connecting-rods were attached. The crankshaft of the engine was made of nickel chrome-steel, and was in two parts connected together at the crank pin; these two parts, after the master-rod had been placed in position and the other connecting rods had been attached to it, were firmly secured. The steel crank case was made in five parts, the two central ones holding the cylinders in place, and on one side another of the five castings formed a cam-box, to the outside of which was secured the extension to which the air-screw was attached. On the other side of the crank case another432 casting carried the thrust-box, and the whole crank case, with its cylinders and gear, was carried on the fixed crank shaft by means of four ball-bearings, one of which also took the axial thrust of the air-screw.

For these engines, castor oil is the lubricant usually adopted, and it is pumped to the crankshaft by means of a gear-driven oil pump; from this shaft the other parts of the engine are lubricated by means of centrifugal force, and in actual practice sufficient unburnt oil passes through the cylinders to lubricate the exhaust valve, which partly accounts for the high rate of consumption of lubricating oil. A very simple carburettor of the floatless, single-spray type was used, and the mixture was passed along the hollow crankshaft to the interior of the crank case, thence through the automatic inlet valves in the tops of the pistons to the combustion chambers of the cylinders. Ignition was by means of a high-tension magneto specially geared to give the correct timing, and the working impulses occurred at equal angular intervals of 102·85 degrees. The ignition was timed so that the firing spark occurred when the cylinder was 26 degrees before the position in which the piston was at the outer end of its stroke, and this timing gave a maximum pressure in the cylinder just after the piston had passed this position.

By 1913, eight different sizes of the Gnome engine were being constructed, ranging from 45 to 180 brake horse-power; four of these were single-crank engines, one having nine and the other three having seven cylinders. The remaining four were constructed with two cranks; three of them had fourteen cylinders apiece, ranged in groups of seven, acting on the cranks, and the one other had eighteen cylinders ranged in two433 groups of nine, acting on its two cranks. Cylinders of the two-crank engines are so arranged (in the fourteen-cylinder type) that fourteen equal angular impulses occur during each cycle; these engines are supported on bearings on both sides of the engine, the air-screw being placed outside the front support. In the eighteen-cylinder model the impulses occur at each 40 degrees of angular rotation of the cylinders, securing an extremely even rotation of the air-screw.

In 1913 the Gnome Monosoupape engine was introduced, a model in which the inlet valve to the cylinder was omitted, while the piston was of the ordinary cast-iron type. A single exhaust valve in the cylinder head was operated in a manner similar to that on the previous Gnome engines, and the fact of this being the only valve on the cylinder gave the engine its name. Each cylinder contained ports at the bottom which communicated with the crank chamber, and were overrun by the piston when this was approaching the bottom end of its stroke. During the working cycle of the engine the exhaust valve was opened early to allow the exhaust gases to escape from the cylinder, so that by the time the piston overran the ports at the bottom the pressure within the cylinder was approximately equal to that in the crank case, and practically no flow of gas took place in either direction through the ports. The exhaust valve remained open as usual during the succeeding up-stroke of the piston, and the val............