Development of compressed air rotary wankel devices for hybrid vehicle

In this study, an efficient expander and compressor are developed using Wankel engine concept for compressed air-electric hybrid vehicle to reduce the environmental impact of automotive industry. This research presents a new approach that integrates the 1D preliminary design using MATLAB software and three dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling using ANSYS®17·2 for more accurate prediction of the performance and flow dynamics at various crank angles, port configurations and locations to optimise the design of the Wankel expander and compressor. Therefore, investigations of Wankel expanders were carried out at various operating conditions to achieve a power output ranging from 1-25 kW. A novel two-stage Wankel expander was developed to achieve high efficiency and compactness design compared to the single-stage expander using the 3D CFD modelling. The study of Wankel compressor was carried out using two inlet ports and two outlet ports to investigate the performance of compressor with different sizes and ports' locations and size. Compressed air-electric hybrid system was developed to recover braking energy to produce compressed air that will be used to power the vehicle. Finally, a single-stage Wankel expander using two inlet ports and two outlet ports was manufactured, assembled and tested experimentally using compressed air.