V Type Engine

Cylinders in this engine are arranged in two in-line banks, tilted 30-60 degrees apart from each other. The vast majority of V engines are water-cooled. The V design provides a higher power-to-weight ratio than an inline engine, while still providing a small frontal area. Perhaps the most famous example of this design is the legendary Rolls Royce Merlin engine, a 27-litre (1649 in3) 60° V12 engine used in, among others, the Spitfires that played a major role in the Battle of Britain.

Source: Wikipedia

Rotary Engine

Early in World War I, when aircraft were first being used for military purposes, it became apparent that existing inline engines were too heavy for the amount of power needed. Aircraft designers needed an engine that was lightweight, powerful, cheap, and easy to manufacture in large quantities. The rotary engine met these goals. Rotary engines have all the cylinders in a circle around the crankcase like a radial engine (see below), but the difference is that the crankshaft is bolted to the airframe, and the propeller is bolted to the engine case. The entire engine rotates with the propeller, providing plenty of airflow for cooling regardless of the aircraft's forward speed. Some of these engines were a two-stroke design, giving them a high specific power and power-to-weight ratio. Unfortunately, the severe gyroscopic effects from the heavy rotating engine made the aircraft very difficult to fly. The engines also consumed large amounts of castor oil, spreading it all over the airframe and creating fumes which were nauseating to the pilots. Engine designers had always been aware of the many limitations of the rotary engine. When the static style engines became more reliable, gave better specific weights and fuel consumption, the days of the rotary engine were numbered.

Source: Wikipedia

In Line Engine

This type of engine has cylinders lined up in one row. It typically has an even number of cylinders, but there are instances of three- and five- cylinder engines. The biggest advantage of an inline engine is that it allows the aircraft to be designed with a narrow frontal area for low drag. If the engine crankshaft is located above the cylinders, it is called an inverted inline engine, which allows the propeller to be mounted up high for ground clearance even with short landing gear. The disadvantages of an inline engine include a poor power-to-weight ratio, because the crankcase and crankshaft are long and thus heavy. An in-line engine may be either air cooled or liquid cooled, but liquid-cooling is more common because it is difficult to get enough air-flow to cool the rear cylinders directly. Inline engines were common in early aircraft, including the Wright Flyer, the aircraft that made the first powered flight. However, the inherent disadvantages of the design soon became apparent, and the inline design was abandoned, becoming a rarity in modern.

Propellant Fuel

All aviation fuel is produced to stringent quality standards to avoid fuel-related engine failures. Aviation standards for octane ratings and vapor pressure are much more strict than those for road vehicle fuel, because an aircraft engine must meet a strictly defined level of performance under known conditions. These high standards mean that aviation fuel costs much more than fuel used for road vehicles.

Aircraft piston engines are typically designed to run on Avgas. Avgas has a higher octane rating compared to automotive gasoline, allowing a higher compression ratio and thus more power out of an engine with the same engine displacement. Currently the most common Avgas is 100LL, which refers to the octane rating (100 octane) and the lead content (LL = Low Lead). Avgas uses tetraethyl lead (TEL) to achieve these high octane ratings, a practice banned in automobile fuel. The shrinking supply of TEL, and the possibility of environmental legislation banning its use, has made a search for replacement fuels for general aviation aircraft a priority for pilot's organizations.[1].

Turbine engines burn various grades of jet fuel, a relatively heavy and less volatile petroleum derivative similar to diesel fuel.

Source: Wikipedia

Engine Design Considerations

The process of developing an engine is one of compromises. Engineers design specific attributes into engines to achieve specific goals. Aircraft are one of the most demanding applications for an engine, presenting multiple design requirements, many of which conflict with each other. An aircraft engine must be:

Reliable, as losing power in an airplane is a substantially greater problem than an automobile engine seizing. Aircraft engines operate at temperature, pressure, and speed extremes, and therefore need to operate reliably and safely under all these conditions.

Lightweight, as a heavy engine increases the empty weight of the aircraft & reduces its payload.

Powerful, to overcome the weight and drag of the aircraft.
small and easily streamlined; large engines with substantial surface area, when installed, create too much drag, wasting fuel and reducing power output.

Repairable, to keep the cost of replacement down. Minor repairs should be relatively inexpensive.

Fuel efficient, to give the aircraft the range the design requires.
capable of operating at sufficient altitude for the aircraft.

Unlike automobile engines, aircraft engines run at high power settings for extended periods of time. In general, the engine runs at maximum power for a few minutes during taking off, then power is slightly reduced for climb, and then spends the majority of its time at a cruise setting—typically 65% to 75% of full power. In contrast, a car engine might spend 20% of its time at 65% power accelerating, followed by 80% of its time at 20% power while cruising. The power of an internal combustion reciprocating or turbine aircraft engine is rated in units of power delivered to the propeller (typically horsepower) which is torque multiplied by crankshaft revolutions per minute (RPM). The propeller converts the engine power to thrust horsepower or thp in which the thrust is a function of the blade pitch of the propeller relative to the velocity of the aircraft. Jet engines are rated in terms of thrust, usually the maximum amount achieved during takeoff.

The design of aircraft engines tends to favor reliability over performance. Long engine operation times and high power settings, combined with the requirement for high-reliability means that engines must be constructed to support this type of operation with ease. Aircraft engines tend to use the simplest parts possible and include two sets of anything needed for reliability. Independence of function lessens the likelihood of a single malfunction causing an entire engine to fail. For example, reciprocating engines have two independent magneto ignition systems, and the engine's mechanical engine-driven fuel pump is always backed-up by an electric pump.

Aircraft spend the vast majority of their time travelling at high speed. This allows an aircraft engine to be air cooled, as opposed to requiring a radiator. With the absence of a radiator, aircraft engines can boast lower weight and less complexity. The amount of air flow an engine receives is usually carefully designed according to expected speed and altitude of the aircraft in order to maintain the engine at the optimal temperature.

Aircraft operate at higher altitudes where the air is less dense than at ground level. As engines need oxygen to burn fuel, a forced induction system such as turbocharger or supercharger is especially appropriate for aircraft use. This does bring along the usual drawbacks of additional cost, weight and complexity.

Modern Development of Engine

English inventor Sir Samuel Morland allegedly used gunpowder to drive water pumps in the 17th century. For more conventional, reciprocating internal combustion engines, the fundamental theory for two-stroke engines was established by Sadi Carnot, France, 1824, whilst the American Samuel Morey received a patent on April 1, 1826. Sir Dugald Clark (1854 – 1932) designed the first two-stroke engine in 1878 and patented it in England in 1881. Automotive production has used a range of energy-conversion systems. These include electric, steam, solar, turbine, rotary, and piston-type internal combustion engines.

Engine cycles

The petrol internal combustion engine, operating on a four-stroke Otto cycle, has been the most successful for automobiles, while diesel engines are used for trucks and buses. Karl Benz was one of the leaders in the development of new engines. In 1878 he began to work on new designs. He concentrated his efforts on creating a reliable gas two-stroke engine that was more powerful, based on Nikolaus Otto's design of the four-stroke engine. Karl Benz showed his real genius, however, through his successive inventions registered while designing what would become the production standard for his two-stroke engine. Benz was granted a patent for it in 1879.

Horizontally-opposed pistons

In 1896, Karl Benz was granted a patent for his design of the first engine with horizontally-opposed pistons. Many BMW motorcycles use this engine type. His design created an engine in which the corresponding pistons move in horizontal cylinders and reach top dead center simultaneously, thus automatically balancing each other with respect to their individual momentums. Engines of this design are often referred to as flat engines because of their shape and lower profile. They must have an even number of cylinders and six, four or two cylinder flat engines have all been common. The most well-known engine of this type is probably the Volkswagen Beetle engine. Engines of this type continue to be a common design principle for high performance aero engines (for propellor driven aircraft) and, engines used by automobile producers such as Porsche and Subaru.

Advancement

School model of an engine

Continuance of the use of the internal combustion engine for automobiles is partly due to the improvement of engine control systems (onboard computers providing engine management processes, and electronically controlled fuel injection). Forced air induction by turbocharging and supercharging have increased power outputs and engine efficiencies. Similar changes have been applied to smaller diesel engines giving them almost the same power characteristics as petrol engines. This is especially evident with the popularity of smaller diesel engine propelled cars in Europe. Larger diesel engines are still often used in trucks and heavy machinery. They do not burn as clean as gasoline engines, however they have far more torque. The internal combustion engine was originally selected for the automobile due to its flexibility over a wide range of speeds. Also, the power developed for a given weight engine was reasonable; it could be produced by economical mass-production methods; and it used a readily available, moderately priced fuel - petrol.

Increasing power

The first half of the twentieth century saw a trend to increasing engine power, particularly in the American models. Design changes incorporated all known methods of raising engine capacity, including increasing the pressure in the cylinders to improve efficiency, increasing the size of the engine, and increasing the speed at which power is generated. The higher forces and pressures created by these changes created engine vibration and size problems that led to stiffer, more compact engines with V and opposed cylinder layouts replacing longer straight-line arrangements.

Combustion efficiency

The design principles favoured in Europe, because of economic and other restraints such as smaller and twistier roads, leant toward smaller cars and corresponding to the doggone design principles that concentrated on increasing the combustion efficiency of smaller engines. This produced more economical engines with earlier four-cylinder designs rated at 40 horsepower (30 kW) and six-cylinder designs rated as low as 80 horsepower (60 kW), compared with the large volume V-8 American engines with power ratings in the range from 250 to 350 hp (190 to 260 kW).

Engine configuration

Earlier automobile engine development produced a much larger range of engines than is in common use today. Engines have ranged from 1 to 16 cylinder designs with corresponding differences in overall size, weight, piston displacement, and cylinder bores. Four cylinders and power ratings from 19 to 120 hp (14 to 90 kW) were followed in a majority of the models. Several three-cylinder, two-stroke-cycle models were built while most engines had straight or in-line cylinders. There were several V-type models and horizontally opposed two- and four-cylinder makes too. Overhead camshafts were frequently employed. The smaller engines were commonly air-cooled and located at the rear of the vehicle; compression ratios were relatively low. The 1970s and '80s saw an increased interest in improved fuel economy which brought in a return to smaller V-6 and four-cylinder layouts, with as many as five valves per cylinder to improve efficiency. The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 operates with a W16 engine meaning that two V8 cylinder layouts are positioned next to each other to create the W shape.

The largest internal combustion engine ever built is the Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C, a 14-cylinder, 2-stroke turbocharged diesel engine that was designed to power the Emma Maersk, the largest container ship in the world. This engine weighs 2300 tons, and when running at 102 RPM produces 109,000 bhp (80,080 kW) consuming some 13.7 tons of fuel each hour.
[edit]Air-breathing engines

Air-breathing engines are internal combustion engines that use the oxygen in atmospheric air to oxidise ('burn') the fuel carried, rather than carrying an oxidiser, as in a rocket. Theoretically, this should result in a better specific impulse than for rocket engines.
A continuous stream of air flows through the Air-breathing engine. This air is compressed, mixed with fuel, ignited and expelled as the exhaust gas. Thrust produced by a typical air-breathing engine is about eight times greater than its weight.The maximum velocity of Air-breathing engines is limited to 1-3 km/s due to extreme temperature and dissociation of the exhaust gas; however, the maximum velocity of a hydrogen-breathing engine of the same design is about 4 times higher.

Examples

Air-breathing engines include:
Reciprocating engine (except steam engines and Stirling engines)
Gas turbine
Jet engine
Turbo-propeller engine
IRIS engine
Pulse detonation engine
Pulse jet
Ramjet
Scramjet
Liquid air cycle engine/Reaction Engines SABRE

Engine

An engine is a machine that produces mechanical force and motion from another form of energy (e.g. a fuel source, compressed air, or electricity).[1] It is also referred to as a prime mover. An automobile makes use of several motors to start the car and drive the car's various pumps – but the power plant that propels the car is called an engine. The term 'motor' was originally used to distinguish the new internal combustion engine-powered vehicles from earlier vehicles powered by a steam engine, such as the steam roller and motor roller. Historic military siege engines included large catapults, trebuchets, and battering rams.

The usage of the term "Engine"

Originally an engine was a mechanical device that converted force into motion. Military devices such as catapults are referred to as siege engines. The term "gin" as in cotton gin is recognised as a short form of the Old French word engin, in turn from the Latin ingenium, related to ingenious. Most devices used in the industrial revolution were referred to as an engine, and this is where the steam engine gained its name.

In more modern usage, the term is used to describe devices that perform mechanical work, follow-ons to the original steam engine. In most cases the work is supplied by exerting a torque, which is used to operate other machinery, generate electricity, pump water, or compress gas. In the context of propulsion systems, an air-breathing engine is one that uses atmospheric air to oxidise the fuel carried rather than supplying an independent oxidizer, as in a rocket.
The term is often used in computer science, designating such software as the "search engine", "3-D graphics game engine", "rendering engine" and "text-to-speech engine", even though these "engines" are not physically mechanical and cause only virtual action (this usage may have been derived from the "difference engine", an early mechanical computing device[citation needed]).