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#Post#: 338--------------------------------------------------
How Combustion Engines Work
DIR By: Red
Date: April 18, 2013, 4:47 pm
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First things first, some of you may wonder if there's actually a
difference between a motor and an engine, and technically there
is. An electrical motor might move an RC car and a gas engine
might move a truck, so why does there have to be separate words
for both of them? According to some people, a motor uses energy
to provide movement, while an engine merely provides for
mechanical function. Siege engines of olde were still considered
"engines," but they didn't necessarily provide movement to
themselves. Things like trebuchets and the like had a moving arm
that flung munitions at things. Besides how awesome that is,
this guide isn't how to raid fortresses and stuff,
unfortunately.
FORWARD
I find it fascinating that there are things right under our
noses that we have very little common knowledge about. I don't
expect people to be able to wire a breadboard or design a
submarine when I meet them on the street - these things are
fairly complex! Truthfully, though, this bothers me. We live in
a world where we've reached a certain level of complexity in
even the simplest of functional devices. Our toasters can print
the weather onto our breakfast if we so desire - but how the
hell does that happen? Someone thought of it, it was concievably
designed, and then somebody made it! On top of it all, we're
just humans with a human mind made of grey mush. What if at the
end of the world, Father Time rises from the depths of the earth
and requires you to hotwire a network of hamster wheels to
generate enough friction to power a small furnace to melt a 28%
gold, 72% tin alloy blade to sacrifice your first born in order
to save humanity? How am I supposed to be prepared for that!?
Well fear no more. As a dedicated hobbiest, I pledge my valiant
honor to make sacrificing your first born a simple and trivial
task.
#Post#: 354--------------------------------------------------
Re: How Combustion Engines Work
DIR By: Red
Date: April 22, 2013, 10:58 am
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Let's review some physics, shall we? In order to make fire, we
need three things: fuel, oxygen, and ignition. The combustion
engine that I'll be explaining today will run on gas, so there's
our fuel. Most engines mix vaporized gas with air in a certain
part called the carburetor, so now we have oxygen, and ignition
is caused by timed clicks of spark plugs. More on this later.
Gas is our fuel and without it, we wouldn't get very far, right?
In an engine, gas is taken from the tank, pushed through a
carburetor, which is then fed into a cylinder. The cylinder goes
hand in hand with a piston - another cylinder inside the car's
cylinder. This is connected to the crankshaft of the engine. The
piston sucks in gas through timed valves which open and close
automatically at the top of the cylinder, and then after the gas
is compressed by the piston and ignited by the spark plug, the
gas explodes and the rapidly expanding exhaust is then pushed
out of another timed valve in the cylinder and sent out the
exhaust pipe. This process has been divided into sections called
strokes.
HTML http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/4StrokeEngine_Ortho_3D_Small.gif
This process is duplicated in the engine by multiple cylinders,
each one firing at a different time to provide the smoothest
ride. When someone says that a car or truck as a V8 or V10
engine in it, it means that the engine has 8 or 10 cylinders,
respectively. The explosions from these cylinders turn a
crankshaft, which is connected to gears in the transmission,
which I'm not planning on going over in this explanation. The
spinning of the crankshaft is also your car's RPMs, or Rotations
per Minute. Some cars don't have it (mostly older ones), but an
RPM gauge tells you how fast your crankshaft is spinning. The
higher the RPM, the more gas your car uses and as your RPMs
increase, the amount of power from the engine seems to decrease.
Most engines can go pretty high, but after a certain point the
crankshaft can risk breaking or wearing out from heat due to
friction or other factors. This is avoided by the use of a
transmission, which operates on interchangeable gears which
allow your car to go faster with a given momentum at a lower
RPM.
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