Power Delivery From An Internal Combustion Engine

By Author: Anthony W Bills
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Power delivery from an internal combustion engine
An internal combustion engine generates power from the combustion of a mixture of a high energy fuel such as gasoline and an oxidizer in an enclosed chamber. The result is that a great amount of energy is released in the form of increased pressure of the gases emanating from the combustion. There are two distinct types of internal combustion engines, i.e. the piston internal combustion engine and the jet engine. The term internal combustion engine is however commonly used to refer exclusively to piston internal combustion engines. Essentially, a piston internal combustion engine consists of the parts shown in fig.1 below:

Fig. 1. The parts of an Internal Combustion Engine
Basically, there are two types of combustion engines i.e. the two-stroke and four-stroke engines. In the two-stroke engine, the four stages of fuel-air mixture intake, compression, ignition and expulsion of the exhaust gases are all accomplished in one cycle (Fig. 2). A stroke is the full vertical movement of the piston from the top of the cylinder to the bottom. Two-stroke ...
... engines are mostly inexpensive and are used for recreation and in small plants where much power is not a priority.
The four- stroke engine is more common in automotive propulsion and medium and heavy industrial purposes. In the first stroke, a mixture of fuel and air is injected into the cylinder. This is followed by an upward stroke which compresses the air-fuel mixture and then a spark is released by the spark plug. This spark ignites the mixture causing it to combust. The exhaust gases produced by the combustion are at very high pressure and expand forcing the piston downwards. In the fourth stroke which is an upward movement of the piston, the exhaust gases are exhausted from the cylinder.

Fig. 2. One cycle of a Four-stroke Internal Combustion Engine

Reference
Taylor, Charles Fayette. (1985). The Internal Combustion Engine in Theory and Practice (Second Edition). USA: First MIT Press.

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