Advances in Automobile

Heat engine in which the combustion of fuel takes place in the engine cylinder is known as
internal combustion Engine.

There are different kinds of internal combustion engines:

1) Diesel Engines
2) Gas turbine Engines
3) Hemi Engines
4) Rotary Engines
5) 2 stroke Engines

• Also external combustion engines are there:

A steam engine is the best example of External Combustion Engine, in which the fuel in a
steam engine burns outside the engine to create steam, and the steam creates motion inside
the engine.
• The internal Combustion Engine is a lot more efficient than External Combustion Engine.
• Plus an Internal Combustion Engine is a lot smaller than an equivalent External
Combustion Engine.
• Almost all cars today use a reciprocating Internal Combustion Engine because this engine
is-
o Relative efficient (Compared to an External Combustion Engine)
o Relative is expensive (Compared to a gas turbine)
o Relatively easy to refuel (Compared to an electric car)
These advantages beat any other existing technology for moving a car around.

INTERNAL COMBUSTION
• Almost all car currently use what is called a four stroke combustion cycle to connect
charge into motion.
• The force stroke approach is also known as the otto cycle, in honour of of the inventor
that is Nikolaus otto.
• The 4 strokes of an engine are:
o Intake stroke
o Compression stroke
o Combustion stroke
o Exhaust stroke
• The piston starts at the top, the intake valve opens, and the piston moves down to let the
engine take in a cylinder full of charge. This is intake stroke.
• Then the piston moves back up to compress this charge compression makes the explosion
more powerful.
• When the piston reaches the top of its stroke, the spark plug emits a spark to ignite the
charge. This charge in the cylinder Explodes driving the piston down.
• Once the piston hits the bottom of its stroke, the exhaust valve opens and the exhaust
leaves the cylinder to go out the tail pipe.
Counting Cylinders:

• The core of the engine is the cylinder, with the piston moving up and down inside the
cylinder.
• Most cars have more than cylinder. (Four, six & eight cylinders are common)
• In a multi – cylinder engine, the cylinders usually are arranged in one of 3 ways –
o inline
o V or
o flat
• The main reason why use multi – cylinder engine instead of a single
big cylinder is smoothness. A multi – cylinder engine is much smoother because it has
multi evenly spaced Explosion instead of one big Explosion.
• Another reason is starting torque. When you start a multi cylinder
engine, you are only driving two cylinders. (Liter) through their compression strokes, but
with one big cylinder you would have to compress lit instead.

The cylinders are arranged in a line in a single bank

 The cylinders are arranged in a line
in a Flat Bank

The cylinders are arranged in two banks on opposite sides of the engine

Displacement

• The combustion chamber is the area where compression and combustion take place.
• As the piston moves up and down you can see that the size of the combustion chamber
changes. It has some maximum volume as well as a minimum volume.
• The different b/w the max and min is called the displacement.
• It is measured in liters or CC’s (Cubic Centimeters, where 1000 Cubic Centimeters equals
a liter)
o A chain saw might have 40cc engine.
o A motorcycle might have a 500cc or 750cc engine.
o A sports car might have a 5.0 liter (5000cc) engine.
• Most car engine fall somewhere b/w 1.5 liter (1500cc) and 4.0 liters (4000cc).
• The displacement tells you something about how much power an engine can produce.
• You can expect about twice as much power from the larger cylinder then the one with
half displacement of the larger cylinder.
• You can get more displacement is an engine either by increasing the no. of cylinder or by
making the combustion chamber bigger or both.

Main Components of an I.C.Engine

• Spark Plug: - It supplies the spark that ignites the charge so that combustion can occur.
• Valves: - The intake and exhaust valves open at the proper time to let in air & fuel & let
out exhaust.
• Piston: - The piston is a cylindrical piece of metal that moves up & down inside the
cylinder.
• Piston rings: - It provides a sliding seal b/w the outer edge of piston and inner edge of
cylinder it’s main purposes is to penal the charge & exhaust in the chamber from leaking
during compression & combustion.
• Connecting rod: - It connects the piston to the crankshaft. It can rotate at both ends so that
its angle can change as the piston moves & the crankshaft rotates.
• Crank – Shaft: - The crankshaft turns the piston up & down motion into circular motion.
• Sump: - The sump surrounds the crankshaft it contains some amount of oil, which
collects in the bottom of sump.

VALVE Trains

• The valve train consists of the valves & a mechanism that opens and closes them.
• The opening & closing system is called a camshaft.
• Most modern engines have what are called overhead cams. This means that the camshaft
is located above the valves.
• The cams on the shaft activate the valves directly or through a very short linkage.
• Older engines used a camshaft located in the sump near the crankshaft.
• Rods linked the cam below to valve lifters above the valves. This approach has more
moving parts and also causes more lag b/w the cams activation of the valve and the
valves subsequent motion.
• A timing belt or timing chain links the crankshaft to the camshaft so that the valves are in
sync with the pistons.
• The camshaft is geared to turn at one half the rate of the crankshaft.
• Many high performance engines have four valves per cylinder (2 for intake & 2 for
exhaust), and this arrangement requires 2 camshafts per bank of cylinder, hence the
phrase “dual over head cams”.

The camshaft

IGNITION SYSTEM

• The energy of the fuel of I.C. engine is locked up in the fuel in the form of chemical
energy.
• Some means have to be employed where by this energy can be released and made
available to run the engine.
• In addition to the fuel for the purpose of combustion, two things are necessary the oxygen
supplied with air and some means for ignition the fuel.
• The ignition system produces a high voltage electrical charge and transmits it to the spark
plugs via ignition wires.
• The charge first flows to a distributor, which you can easily find under the wood of most
cars.
• The distributor has one wire going in the center and four, six or eight wires (depending on
the no. of cylinders) coming out of it
• These ignition wires send the charge to each spark plug. The engine is timed so that only
one cylinder receives a spark from the distributor at a time.
• This approach provides maximum smoothness.

Cooling System

• Very high temperature is developed in the cylinder of an I.C. engine as a result of the
combustion of fuel taking place inside the cylinder.
• Therefore it is necessary to extract some of the heat from the cylinder to avoid damage to
the metal of the cylinder and piston.
• If the cylinder were not cooled, the seizure (jarring) of piston in the cylinder would occur
as a result of the piston and its rings becoming too hot;
• Also it would not be possible to lubricate the piston since the heat will burn any lubricant
that may be used.
• The cooling system in most cars consists of the radiator and water pump.
• Water circulates through passages around the cylinder and then travels through the
radiator to cool it of.
• In a few cars, as well as most motorcycles & lawn movers, the engine is air cooled
instead.
• In air-cooling the engine have fins adoring outside each cylinder.
• Air – cooling makes the engine lighter but hotter, generally decreasing engine life &
overall performance.

AIR INTAKE SYATEM

• Most cars are normally aspirated which means that air flows through an air filter and
directly into the cylinder.
• High performance engines are either turbo charged or super charged. Which means that
air coming into the engine is first pressurized (so that more air/fuel mixture can be
squeezed into each cylinder). To increase the performance.
• The amount of pressurization is called boost.
• A turbo charger uses a small turbine attached to the Exhaust pipe to spin a compressing
turbine in the incoming air stream.
• A super charger is attached directly to the engine to spin the compressor.
 Turbo Chargers

Starting System

• The starting system consists of an electric starter motor and a starter solenoid.
• The starting motor is driven by means of the current taken form the battery. It is usually
mounted on the side of the engine.
• The motor must be powerful enough to turn the engine at a speed such that the carburetor
will give a proper air fuel mixture. It must be capable of exerting a very heavy torque
when starting and at low speeds, for this purpose the starter motor is series wound.
• Nowadays-starting motors are sometimes series shunt wound. The adv. of this type of
winding system is the lower internal resistance.
• The construction of the starter motor is basically similar to the d.c. generator
construction, except that it is series wound the generator is shunt wound.
• The main components are the body, the armature the commentator and field windings.
• Because so much energy is needed & because a car used a K – V electrical system,
hundreds of amps of electricity must flow into starter motor.
• The starter solenoid is essentially a large electronic switch that can handle that much
current when the ignition key is turned, it activates the solenoid to power the motor.

Fuel System:- The fuel system pumps gas from the gas tank and mixed it with air so that
the proper air/fuel mixture can flow into the cylinder fuel is delivered in 3 common ways –
carburetion, port fuel injection, and direct fuel injection.

Carburetion :- In the S.I. engine a combustible fuel air mixture is prepared an outside
engine cylinder. The process of preparing this mixture is called carburetion. The carburetor is
the device, which atomizes the fuel and mixes it wit hair. During the suction stroke vacuum is
created in the cylinder which causes the air to flow through the carburetor & the fuel to be
sprayed from the jets, because of the volatility of the fuel, most of the fuel vaporizes and
forms a combustible fuel air mixture which is ignited by the electric spark.

Four important factors, which significantly affect the process of carburetion, are:

1) The time available for the preparation of the mixture.

2) The temperature of the incoming air of the intake manifold.
3) The quality of the fuel supplied.
4) The design of the Induction System & combustion chamber.

• In a fuel injection ed engine the right amount of fuel is injected individually into each
cylinder either right above the intake valve (port fuel injection) or directly into the
cylinder (direct fuel injection).

Emission Control:-

There are four areas in the automobile, which can emit pollutants into the atmosphere.
These are the fuel tank, the carburetor, the crankcase and the exhaust system.
3) The fuel tank and the carburetor emit fuel vapors, the crankcase gives out the partly burnt
air fuel mixture blown off through the piston rings, while the emissions from the exhaust
system include un burnt hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides & sulphur
oxides.
4) Therefore the atmosphere. Controlling this area can decrease pressure. For that, two
approached have been followed:-
• To reduce the formation of pollutants in the emissions by
redesigning the engine ventilating system, carburetor & fuel tank. The combustion
chamber, along with fuel system, cooling system, ignition system & exhaust system are
redesigned, these improving upon the combustion efficiency which reduces the
emissions.
• To destroy the pollutants after these have been formed.

• Reduction of Emissions:- This is achieved by-

1) Closed crankcase ventilation.

2) Fuel tank & carburetor ventilation.
3) Redesigning the engine.
• Combustion chamber.
• Cooling system.
• Fuel supply system.
• Ignition system.

Lubrication System:

The lubrication system makes every moving part in the engine gets oil so that it can
move easily. The engine cannot run without lubricating oil
• When a film of some lubricating oil is interposed between two surfaces so that the two
are not in actual physical contact with each other the only resistance to motion remains
the resistance of the oil itself. This state of lubrication is called hydrodynamic lubrication.
• When the load acting on bearings is very high, the materials itself deforms elastically
against pressure but it up of oil film....... elastohydrodynamic lubricants.
• If the film thickness between the two surfaces in relative motion becomes so thin that
formation of hydrodynamic oil film is not possible and surface high spots penetrate this
thin film to make metal to metal contact than ..... boundary lubrication.
• In hydrostatic lubrication a thin oil film resists its instantaneous squeezing out under
reversal of loads with relatively slow motions.

Main objects of Lubricants:

1) To provide cooling effect.

2) To provide cushioning effect.
3) To provide cleaning action.
4) To provide a sealing action.

EXHAUST SYSTEM:

• The exhaust system includes the exhaust pipe and the muffler.
• Without muffler what you would hear is the sound of thousands of small explosions
coming out your tail pipe.
• A muffler dampers the sound.
• The exhaust also includes a catalytic converter. Which is a common in Exhaust &
Emission system.

PRODUCING MORE POWER

The following variables must be taken care for making engine more powerful and for
more fuel efficiency:

• Increase displacement:- More displacement means more power because you can
burn more gas during each revolution of the engine so you can inc displacement by
making the cylinders bigger or by adding more cylinder. 12 cylinders seems to be the
practical limit.

• Increase the compression ratio:-

o Higher compression ratio produce more power up to a pt.

o The more you compress the charge, however the more likely it is to
spontaneously burst into flame before spark plug ignite it.
o Higher-octane gasolines prevent this sort of easy combustion.
o So high performance cars use high-octane gasoline.

• Stuff more into each cylinder:-

 o If you can cram more air (& therefore fuel) into a cylinder of a given size, you
can get more power from the cylinder.
o Turbo charges and super charges pressurize the incoming air to effectively cram
more air into a cylinder.

• Cool the incoming air:- Compressing air resists temp.

o However you would like to have the coolest air possible in the cylinder because
the hottest the air is, the less it will expand when combustion takes place.
o Therefore many turbo charged and super charged cars have an inter cooler.
o An inter cooler is a spiral radiator through which the compressed air passes to
cool it off before it enters the cylinder.

• Let air come in more easily:-

o As the piston moves down in the intake stroke, air resistance can rob power from
the engine.
o Air resistance can be lessened dramatically by putting two intake valves in each
cylinder.
o Some newer cars are also using polished intake manifolds to eliminate air flow.

• Let Exhaust exit more easily:-

o If air resistance makes it hard for exhaust to exit a cylinder, it robs the engine of
porn.
o Adding around exhaust valve to each cylinder can lessen air resistance.
o A car with 2 intake & 2 exhaust valves has 4 valves per cylinder, which improves
performance.
o If exhaust pipe is too small or the muffler has a lot of air resistance this can cause
backpressure, which has the same effect.
o High performance exhaust system uses headers, big tail pipes & free flowing
mufflers to eliminate backpressure in the exhaust system.
o Car having 2 exhaust pipes instead of 1 because their goal is to improve the flow
of exhaust & this is called “Dual Exhaust”.

• Engine Compactness :-

o Lightweight parts help the engine perform better.

o Each time a piston changes direction, it uses up energy to stop the travel in one
direction and start it in another. The lighter the piston, the less energy it takes.