The NSU Delphin III streamliner motorcycle set the

motorcycle land speed record The motorcycle land-speed record is the fastest speed achieved by a motorcycle on land. It is standardized as the speed over a course of fixed length, averaged over two runs in opposite directions. AMA National Land Speed Records requires 2 passes ...

in 1956. Wilhelm Herz rode the machine to at

Bonneville Speedway Bonneville Speedway (also known as the Bonneville Salt Flats Race Track) is an area of the Bonneville Salt Flats northeast of Wendover, Utah, that is marked out for motor sports. It is particularly noted as the venue for numerous land speed recor ...

in Utah, to break 200 mph (320 km/h) for the first time. Its fairing, designed in a

wind tunnel Wind tunnels are large tubes with air blowing through them which are used to replicate the interaction between air and an object flying through the air or moving along the ground. Researchers use wind tunnels to learn more about how an aircraft ...

University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart (german: Universität Stuttgart) is a leading research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany wit ...

(then Stuttgart Technical College), gave it a

drag coefficient In fluid dynamics, the drag coefficient (commonly denoted as: c_\mathrm, c_x or c_) is a dimensionless quantity that is used to quantify the drag or resistance of an object in a fluid environment, such as air or water. It is used in the drag equ ...

of 0.19. The same engine powered Herz to a 1951 world speed record, with a less efficient frame/fairing, the ''Delphin I''. The engine used an unusual rotary

supercharger In an internal combustion engine, a supercharger compresses the intake gas, forcing more air into the engine in order to produce more power for a given displacement. The current categorisation is that a supercharger is a form of forced induct ...

related to NSU's eventual development of the

Wankel engine The Wankel engine (, ) is a type of internal combustion engine using an Eccentric (mechanism), eccentric rotary combustion engine, rotary design to convert pressure into rotating motion. It was invented by German engineer Felix Wankel, and desi ...

. In the supercharger, both a trochoidal inner rotor and

epitrochoid In geometry, an epitrochoid ( or ) is a roulette traced by a point attached to a circle of radius rolling around the outside of a fixed circle of radius , where the point is at a distance from the center of the exterior circle. The parametric ...

al outer rotor spun around a stationary shaft.

References

External links

* from Technikmuseum Speyer * {{Forced induction motorcycles Delphin III Land speed record motorcycles Streamliner motorcycles