When you open the hood of your car what do you see? You probably see a big jumble of metal with tubes and wire connected to each other. This is the car engine. If you don’t know enough about the engine of your car, this is just the right time to discuss the basics along with the key parts of your car’s engine. Read along to discover what is going on with your car every time the engine is turned on and the car starts moving. Let us start the walk through.
The gasoline car engine is responsible for converting gasoline into motion proving movement for the car. The current easiest way in creating motion from gasoline is by burning the gasoline inside the engine. Thus, a car engine is equivalent to an internal combustion engine. Unlike external combustion engines such as a steam engine, internal combustion engine makes combustion internally. Nowadays, you will not really see an external combustion engine except on trains.
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There are two things to remember about internal combustion engines. These are diesel engines and gas turbine engines. These two have their own advantages and disadvantages. Internal combustion engine provides more efficient fuel use per mile. Additionally, internal combustion engines are way smaller than external combustion engines.
The principle behind reciprocating internal combustion engine is that a great amount of energy is created in the form of gas if a tiny amount of gasoline is put in an enclosed space and then ignited. This energy can be used in propelling a potato 500 feet above the ground. Most of the cars currently manufactured are made up of a 4-stroke combustion cycle which converts gasoline to motion. This approach was invented by Nikolaus Otto in 1867 and is now known as the Otto cycle. The four-stroke approach includes compression stroke, exhaust stroke, intake stroke, and combustion stroke.
The intake stroke happens when the engine starts its cycle, the piston located at the top starts, intake valve opens, and this piston moves downward letting the engine take air and gasoline. Only a tiny drop of gasoline is needed to be mixed with air for this process. The piston then moves back to compress the gasoline and air mixture. As soon as the piston reaches the top, the spark plug then sparks to ignite the gasoline. The piston is driven down when the gasoline charges explodes in the cylinder.
The exhaust valve opens and the exhaust then leaves the cylinder into the tailpipe once the piston is at the bottom. The engine is now ready for the next cycle by taking in another mixture of air and gasoline. You will notice that motion coming out of an internal combustion system is rotation instead of linear. The motion produced by the pistons is transformed into rotational motion. This rotational motion occurring in an engine is efficient as this helps turn the car wheels.
Now the basic engine parts include the cylinders, spark plug, piston rings, and intake and exhaust valves. The engine’s core is the cylinder containing the piston which moves up and down. A single cylinder is typical for most lawn mowers but almost all cars have four, six, or eight cylinders. A multi-cylinder engine is usually arranged in either the following ways: inline, V, or flat. Various configurations have different disadvantages and advantages of smoothness, shape, and manufacturing costs. These absolutely depend on the vehicle manufacturers.
In detail, the spark plug is responsible for supplying the spark which ignites the air and fuel mixture for combustion to occur. The spark must begin at the right time for the car to work properly. Then, the intake and exhaust valves open at also the right timing to take in the mixture and bring the exhaust out. During compression and combustion, these valves are closed in order to seal the combustion chamber. The piston is cylindrical shaped moving up and down in the cylinder. Piston rings seal the outer edge of the piston and the cylinder’s inner edge. The rings serve to prevent the leak of the air and fuel mixture and combustion chamber exhaust during compression and combustion. The rings also prevent oil in the sump to leak to the combustion area that would result to burnt and lost oil. There are some cars that have to be added oil for every 1 thousand miles for burning oil as the rings are improperly sealed and the engine is old.
Intake and exhaust valves example (photo by www.enginebasics.com)
Inside view of Maserati’s engine
Piston rings example (source: Wikipedia.org)
V8 power engine sample
If you are having a hard time imagining the processes discussed in this article, click the video. This will show you a more detailed version of how a car engine works, in 3D.