Okay, I thoughtI’d heard of all the little oddball steam engine designs in the world, but I stumbled across this ebay auction which near the bottom of the page has an ad for a book with the following description
Googling yields either nothing, or links to sites selling copies of the book, but nothing useful as to what the hell the damn thing is and why it never caught on. So, anyone know?
Dunno, certainly from the description of the thing, it sounds like it might be a precursor to the Wankel, but if Wankel knew anything about it, you’d think that google would turn something up besides sites showing the book for sale. I’d think that at least one of the Wankel sites would mention something about it.
I don’t know if I could do the math to prove it, but I could see how one could make a rotary engine where the rotor travels inside an elliptical chamber, as opposed to the “siamesed circles” chamber of a Wankel. The Wankel probably lends itself to higher compression ratios since the pinched in area further closes the chamber at ignition.
I don’t know whether the OPs particular engine is mentioned, but here is a site on Rotary Steam Engines that provides the histories of several examples, giving the pros and cons of their use.