The internal Combustion Engine is a heat engine used for almost all the vehicles, where a fuel with an oxidizer is combusted in the combustion chamber. The mixture will be air – fuel mixture which will be combusted using the help of a spark plug. It can also be combusted with the help of compression ignition. This produces more energy and the efficiency will be only 30 percent. Internal Combustion Engine is a heat engine and is divided into two types.
They are Rotary Engines and Reciprocating Engines. Open cycle gas turbine and Wankel Engine comes under Rotary Engine. Gasoline engine and diesel engine come under Reciprocating engine. Heat engine also consists of External Combustion engine which is also divided into reciprocating and rotary engines. Steam Engine and Stirling engine comes under reciprocating engines. Steam turbine and Closed cycle gas turbine comes under rotary engine. Internal Combustion Engine consists of many parts like piston, piston rings, transmission system, crank, crankshaft, fuel pump, carburetor, valves – inlet and exhaust, flywheels, shielding systems and many more. There are many types of internal combustion engines and are classified below.
Classification of Internal Combustion Engines –
- Automobile Engine – The engines that are mostly used for automobiles. This is the most basic type of engine.
- Aircraft Engine – Aircraft engine is a propulsion system which generates mechanical power. These engines may be Light weight piston combustion engines or gas turbine engines.
- Locomotive Engines – The engine used for rail transport vehicles which provides more power for movement. This may run with the help of coal, steam, diesel and power.
- Design – There are many designs in internal combustion engines and some of them are single cylinder, multi cylinder, radial, in-line, V-shape, single motor, multi motor and many more.
- Operating cycle – There are many types of engines based on operating cycle namely Atkinson or SI engine, Diesel engine, Dual Engine, Otto cycle and many more.
- Number of Cycles – There are only two different types based on cycles. When the number of strokes are four, it is a four stroke cycle and when the number of strokes are two, it is two stroke cycle.
- Fuel – There are two types of internal combustion engines based on fuel. They are Convectional engines which work with petrol, diesel, coal and others. The other engine is Alternative engine which work with liquid petrol, gas, alcohols, biogas and hydrogen.
- Ignition – There are two types based on ignition and they are Spark Ignition and Compression Ignition. Compression ignition does not have any spark.
- Mixture – There are two types based on mixture. Carburetion with no fuel mix and the other is Fuel injection.
- Cooling System – There are two types based on cooling systems. They are air cooled system which uses the outside air to cool the engine and the water cooled engine which uses the water to cool the engine.
- Air Intake – There are two types based on air intake. They are Naturally aspirated and super charged.
This is the classification of Internal Combustion Engines.
