MEE 561
(INTERNAL
COMBUSTION ENGINES)
NOTE
BY: PROF. O. A. LASODE
DEPARTMENT OF
MECHANICAL
ENGINEERING,
UNIVERSITY OF ILORIN,
NIGERIA,
COURSE CONTENT
1. Characteristics and performance of internal combustion engines.
2. Piston engines of the Otto and diesel types, gas turbines.
3. Thermodynamics of cycles
4. Combustion
5. Fuel metering, injection
6. Supercharging and compounded engines
TEXTS
• Rogers and Mayhew – Engineering thermodynamics – Work and heat
transfer.
• Moran and Shapiro –
• G. F. C. Rogers and Y. R. Mayhew: Thermodynamic and Transport
Properties of Fluids SI Units, 5th Edition, Blackwell Publishing
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of internal combustion engine is the production of mechanical power
from the chemical energy contained in the fuel. In internal combustion engines,
as distinct from external combustion engines, this energy is released by burning
or oxidizing the fuel inside the engine. The fuel-air mixture before combustion
and the burned products of combustion are the actual working fluids. The work
transfers which provide the desired power output occur directly between the
working fluids and the mechanical components of the engine. The internal
combustion engines which are the subject of this course are spark-ignition
engines (S.I.) (sometimes called Otto engines or gasoline or petrol engines,
though other fuels can be used) and compression-ignition or diesel engines.
Because of their simplicity, ruggedness and high power/weight ratio, these two
types of engines have found wide application in transportation (land, sea and air)
and power generation.
It is the fact that combustion takes place inside the work-producing part of these
engines that makes their design and operating characteristics fundamentally
different from those of other types of engines.
The gas turbine is also an “internal combustion engine”. Conventionally,
however, the term is used for spark-ignition and compression-ignition engines.
The operating principles of gas turbines are fundamentally different and are
discussed separately in this course.
ENGINE CLASSIFICATION
There are many different types of internal combustion engines. They can be
classified by:
1. Application: Automobile, truck, locomotive, light aircraft, marine,
portable power system, power generation.
2. Basic engine design: Reciprocating engines (in turn subdivided by
arrangement of cylinders e.g., in-line, V, radial, opposed), rotary engines
(Wankel and other geometries)
Figure 1: Engine classification by cylinder arrangements
Figure 2: A typical design of the Wankel engine
3. Working cycle: Four-stroke cycle – naturally aspirated (admitting
atmospheric air), supercharged (admitting pre-compressed fresh mixture),
and turbo-charged (admitting fresh mixture compressed in a compressor
driven by an exhaust turbine), two-stroke – crankcase scavenged,
supercharged and turbocharged.
4. Valve or port design and location: Overhead (or I- head) valves, under
head (or L-head) valves, rotary valves, cross-scavenged porting (inlet and
exhaust ports on opposite sides of cylinder at one end), loop-scavenged
porting (inlet and exhaust ports on same side of cylinder at one end),
through – or uniflow-scavenged (inlet and exhaust ports or valves at
different ends of cylinder)
5. Fuel: Gasoline (or petrol), fuel oil (or diesel fuel), natural gas, liquid
petroleum gas, alcohols (methanol, ethanol), hydrogen, dual fuel.
6. Method of mixture preparation: carburetion, fuel injection into the
intake ports or intake manifold, fuel injection into the engine cylinder.
7. Method of ignition: spark ignition (in conventional engines where the
mixture is uniform and in stratified-charge engines where the mixture is
non-uniform), compression ignition (in conventional diesels, as well as
ignition in gas engines by pilot injection of fuel oil).
8. Combustion chamber design: open chamber (many designs: e.g. discs,
wedge, hemisphere bowl-in-piston), divided chamber (small and large
auxiliary chambers; many designs: e.g. swirl chambers, pre-chambers)
9. Method of load control: Throttling of fuel and air flow together so
mixture composition is essentially unchanged, control of fuel alone,
combination of these.
[Link] of cooling: water cooled, air cooled, uncooled (other than by
natural convection and radiation)