INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES - ICE

A. Vania
Politecnico di Milano, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Milan, Italy
 ORDINARY CRANK-SLIDER MECHANISM 2

spark plug
valves
(inlet & exhaust) piston
chamber

piston crank shaft

(slider)
air-fuel mixture
(exhaust gas)

piston rod
frame (connecting rod)

connecting rod – piston rod

wrist-pin
crank-shaft

Internal Combustion Engine ring

piston
APPLIED MECHANICS – Prof. Andrea VANIA
 ORDINARY CRANK-SLIDER MECHANISM 3

wrist-pin

foot
stem
cross-section
A-A

counterweight
head

connecting rod web

APPLIED MECHANICS – Prof. Andrea VANIA

 ORDINARY CRANK-SLIDER MECHANISM 4

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 INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE - ICE 5

FOUR STROKE ICE TWO STROKE ICE

1) intake (induction, suction) 1) power

2) compression 2) scavenging
3) power (working stroke) 3) compression
4) exhaust
APPLIED MECHANICS – Prof. Andrea VANIA
 ICE - Internal Combustion Engines 6
An internal combustion engine (ICE) is an engine where the combustion of a fuel occurs with
an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid
flow circuit. In an internal combustion engine the expansion of the high-temperature and
high-pressure gases produced by combustion apply direct force to some component of the
engine. The force is applied typically to piston, turbine blades, or a nozzle. This force moves
the component over a distance, transforming chemical energy into useful mechanical energy.
The term internal combustion engine usually refers to an engine in which combustion is
intermittent, such as the more familiar four-stroke and two-stroke piston engines. A second
class of internal combustion engines use continuous combustion: gas turbines, jet engines
and most rocket engines, each of which are internal combustion engines on the same
principle as previously described.
Internal combustion engines are quite different from external combustion engines in which
the energy is delivered to a working fluid not consisting of, mixed with, or contaminated by
combustion products. Working fluids can be air, hot water, pressurized water or even liquid
sodium, heated in a boiler. ICEs are usually powered by energy-dense fuels such as gasoline
or diesel, liquids derived from fossil fuels. While there are many stationary applications, most
ICEs are used in mobile applications and are the dominant power supply for cars, aircraft,
and boats.
Typically an ICE is fed with fossil fuels like natural gas or petroleum products such as
gasoline, diesel fuel or fuel oil. There’s a growing usage of renewable fuels like bio-diesel for
compression ignition engines and bio-ethanol for spark ignition engines. Hydrogen is
sometimes used, and can be made from either fossil fuels or renewable energy .
APPLIED MECHANICS – Prof. Andrea VANIA
 SI ENGINES 7

The term spark-ignition engine (SI engine) refers to internal combustion engines,
generally petrol engines, where the combustion process of the air-fuel mixture is
ignited by a spark from a spark plug. This is in contrast to compression-ignition
engines (CI engine), typically diesel engines, where the heat generated from
compression is enough to initiate the combustion process, without needing any
external spark.
Spark-ignition engines are commonly referred to as "gasoline engines" in America,
and "petrol engines" in Britain and the rest of the world. However, these terms are not
preferred, since spark-ignition engines can (and increasingly are) run on fuels other
than petrol/gasoline, such as autogas (LPG), methanol, ethanol, bioethanol,
compressed natural gas (CNG), hydrogen, and (in drag racing) nitro-methane. The
working cycle of both spark-ignition and compression-ignition engines may be either
two-stroke or four-stroke. A four-stroke spark-ignition engine is an Otto cycle engine.
It consists of following four strokes: suction or intake stroke, compression stroke,
expansion stroke, exhaust stroke. Each stroke consists of 180 degree rotation of
crankshaft rotation and hence a four-stroke cycle is completed through 720 degree of
crank rotation. Thus for one complete cycle there is only one power stroke while the
crankshaft turns by two revolutions.

APPLIED MECHANICS – Prof. Andrea VANIA

 SI ENGINES 8
Intake, induction or suction: the intake valves are open as a result of the cam lobe pressing down
on the valve stem. The piston moves downward increasing the volume of the combustion
chamber and allowing air to enter in the case of a CI engine or an air fuel mix in the case of SI
engines that do not use direct injection. The air or air-fuel mixture is called the charge in any case.
Compression: in this stroke, both valves are closed and the piston moves upward reducing the
combustion chamber volume which reaches its minimum when the piston is at TDC. The piston
performs work on the charge as it is being compressed; as a result its pressure, temperature and
density increase; an approximation to this behavior is provided by the ideal gas law. Just before
the piston reaches TDC, ignition begins. In the case of a SI engine, the spark plug receives a high
voltage pulse that generates the spark which gives it its name and ignites the charge. In the case
of a CI engine the fuel injector quickly injects fuel into the combustion chamber as a spray; the
fuel ignites due to the high temperature.
Power or working stroke: the pressure of the combustion gases pushes the piston downward
exerting more work than it was made to compress the charge. Complementary to the compression
stroke, the combustion gases expand and as a result their temperature, pressure and density
decreases. When the piston is near to BDC the exhaust valve opens. The combustion gases
expand irreversibility due to the leftover pressure—in excess of back pressure, the gauge
pressure on the exhaust port—, this is called the blow-down.
Exhaust: the exhaust valve remains open while the piston moves upward expelling the
combustion gases. For naturally aspirated engines a small part of the combustion gases may
remain in the cylinder during normal operation because the piston does not close the combustion
chamber completely; these gases dissolve in the next charge. At the end of this stroke, the
exhaust valve closes, the intake valve opens, and the sequence repeats in the next cycle. The
intake valve may open before the exhaust valve closes to allow better scavenging.
APPLIED MECHANICS – Prof. Andrea VANIA
 INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE - ICE 9

C - crankshaft
FOUR STROKE ICE E - exhaust camshaft
I - inlet camshaft
P - piston rod
S - spark plug
V - valves (exhaust / intake)
W- cooling water jacket
grey - engine block
Spark plug

APPLIED MECHANICS – Prof. Andrea VANIA

 CI ENGINES 10

The diesel engine (also known as a Compression - Ignition engine) is an internal

combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel that has been injected into the
combustion chamber is initiated by the high temperature which a gas achieves when
greatly compressed (adiabatic compression). This contrasts with spark-ignition engines
such as a petrol engine (gasoline engine) or gas engine (using a gaseous fuel as
opposed to gasoline), which use a spark plug to ignite an air-fuel mixture.
The diesel engine has the highest thermal efficiency of any standard internal or
external combustion engine due to its very high compression ratio and inherent lean
burn which enables heat dissipation by the excess air. A small efficiency loss is also
avoided compared to two-stroke non-direct-injection gasoline engines since unburnt
fuel is not present at valve overlap and therefore no fuel goes directly from the
intake/injection to the exhaust. Low-speed diesel engines (as used in ships and other
applications where overall engine weight is relatively unimportant) can have a thermal
efficiency that exceeds 50%.

APPLIED MECHANICS – Prof. Andrea VANIA

 SI & CI ENGINES 11

SI engine CI engine

SI engine
CI engine

APPLIED MECHANICS – Prof. Andrea VANIA

 CHARACTERISTIC CURVES 12

Effects of injection control

The characteristic curves of ICEs can be defined within a limited range of the crankshaft
rotational speed. No torque is available for startups and a clutch must be inserted between
IC engines and motor driven systems. The main reasons for this are:
• The lower rotational speed is affected by the energy loss caused by: i) friction forces
between cylinder and piston, crankpin journals, main journals; ii) energy loss to move
the pump of the cooling and lubricating circuits; iii) irregular intake/suction;
• The upper rotational speed is affected by: i) energy loss in intake & exhaust ducts;
ii) decrease of the volumetric efficiency; iii) increase of the accelerations, inertia actions,
mechanical stresses (fatigue);

APPLIED MECHANICS – Prof. Andrea VANIA

 CHARACTERISTIC CURVES 13

fuel consumption

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 TORQUE vs. STROKES 14

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 TORQUE vs. STROKES 15

torque

induction compression ignition exhaust

expansion

Two crankshaft revolutions Two crankshaft revolutions

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 16

APPLIED MECHANICS – Prof. Andrea VANIA