Physics of the Internal Combustion Engine

Background Infromation

In Cambridge England, in 1820 a man by the name of Reverend W. Cecil was explaining to fellow scientists and inventors how an internal combustion engine worked. All of his fellow colleagues just laughed at him and told him it could never be done.

In 1860 Jean Joseph E'tienne Lenoir made Cecil's idea come to life by building the first practical internal combustion engine. Three years later in 1863 Lenoir built one of the worlds first gas engine cars.

Ignition System

Have you ever wondered how turning a simple key will start a car? Well, I'll tell you. When you turn the key a small voltage from the cars battery is sent to the coil. The coil turns the small voltage into a large voltage. Then the coil sends the the voltage to the distributor.

The distributor has heavy wires that send the voltage to each spark plug. The distributor, also, tells the spark plugs which one should fire and when to fire.

The altenator is another part of the ignition system. The basic job of the altenator is to make more voltage to charge the battery.

Fuel System

Everyone knows that you need to have gas in your car for it to run. When you put gas into the car it goes into the gas tank. The gas then makes its way from the tank to the carberator via the fuel pump.

The carberator mixes the gas and air together. The air is first cleaned by the air filter before going to the carberator.

The air and gas mixture is then sent to the intake manifold, from there its sent to the intake valve.

Combustion

The camshaft opens and closes both the intake valve and the exhust valve. When the intake valve opens, the air and gas mixture rush into the cylinder. The valve closes and the mixture is traped inside.

The piston is pushed up and causes compression. At just the right moment the spark plug sparks and ignites the mixture. When the gas explodes it pushes the piston back down.

When the piston is at the bottom of the stroke, the exhuast valve opens sending the exhaust out through the tail pipe.

Exhaust System

Once the burnt fuel is throught the exhaust valve it is sent to the exhaust manifold. The exhaust maniflod is just a collecting area for the exhaust coming from the cylinders.

Pressure keeps the exhaust moving to the pipes then into the muffler.