IC Engine

Internal Combustion Engine 

An engine is a mechanic that converts heat energy into mechanical energy. The heat from burning the fuel produces power which moves the vehicle. Sometimes the engine is called the power plant.

Automotive engines are internal combustion engine, because the fuel that is burnt internally i.e. inside the engine. They have piston that moves up and down in cylinder. These are called piston engine.

The internal combustion engine was invented by Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir (Belgian Born). Lenoir made the first internal combustion engine that provides a reliable and continuous source of power, which was the gas engine using coal gas, in 1860, in France.

The creation of the rocket made by the Chinese people is considered to be the simplest kind of internal combustion engine. Also previous pioneers who also worked on the internal combustion engine but failed, also helped in the development of the internal combustion engine.

The first practical internal combustion engine based heavily on experience from the production of steam engines. The engine had a horizontal cylinder; slide valves were used to draw in the fuel-air mixture; and it was double acting, the mixture being fed into the cylinder alternately at either end of the piston. Once it is in the cylinder the mixture was ignited by electric sparks generated at spark plugs by a coil and a battery. This ignition system, a primitive ancestor of modern electric ignition, was unreliable.

Because the first internal combustion engine was unreliable, many later pioneers made improvements of the first internal combustion engine. As a result many new engines were made. Such engines were the two and four stroke engine and the petrol engine. Siegfried Marcus in Austria in 1864 was able to create an engine that uses petrol as a fuel. The first internal combustion engine is the basic form for modern car engines.

The invention of the internal combustion engine made some of man’s most cherished dreams become reality: the aircraft, the motor car, the submarine, the tank and many other inventions before they could be born in there practical form. Nowadays the internal combustion engine is for effective and economical than ever, with reduced gas emissions and lower fuel consumption.



Engine Classification

Automotive engines can be classified according to:

1. Number of cylinders.

2. Arrangement of cylinders.

3. Arrangement of valves and valve trains.

4. Type of cooling.

5. Number of strokes per cycle.

6. Type of fuel burned.

7. Method of ignition.

8. Firing order.

9. Reciprocating or rotary.

Number of strokes per cycle.

· Four stroke engine.

· Two stroke engine.