Information about Engine

An engine is something that produces an output effect from a given input. The origin of engineering however, came from the design, building and working of (military "engines") because before such devices came to be employed in battles there were very few mechanical devices used. Military engines included siege engines, large catapults, trebuchets, battering rams etc. So the first engineers were military engineers, then later as engineering developed, there came civil engineers. These were engineers who dealt with designing, building and commissioning roads, bridges, docks and wharves, large public and private buildings.

An engine whose purpose is to produce kinetic energy output from a fuel source is called a prime mover; alternatively, a motor is a device which produces kinetic energy from a preprocessed "fuel" (such as electricity, a flow of hydraulic fluid or compressed air).

A car has a starter motor, a windscreen wiper motor, windscreen washer motor, a fuel pump motor and motors to adjust the wing mirrors from within the car and a (motorised) radio antenna - but the power plant that propels the car is an engine. Again an aircraft will have many motors installed for operation of its many auxiliary operations and services, but aircraft are propelled by engines, in this case, jet engines.

Usage of the term

Originally, early at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in everyday language Engine an engine was any sort of mechanical device that converted some form of energy into mechanical or motion force. The term "gin" as in cotton gin is recognised as originating from the Old French word 'engin' as a short form of its usage. Practically every device from the industrial revolution was referred to as an engine, and this is where the steam engine gained its name. The term has more recently become popular in computer science in terms like "search engine", "3-D graphics game engine", "rendering engine" and "text-to-speech engine", even though these "engines" are not mechanical and cause no mechanical action (this usage may have been inspired by the "difference engine", and early mechanical computing device). Military devices such as catapults are referred to as siege engines. In more recent 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 carrying an oxidiser, as in a rocket. Theoretically, this should result in a better specific impulse than for rocket engines.

Antiquity

Simple machines, such as club and oar (examples of the lever), are prehistoric. More complex engines using human power, animal power, water power, wind power and even steam power date back to antiquity. Human power was focused by the use of simple engines, such as the capstan, windlass or treadmill, and with ropes, pulleys, and block and tackle arrangements, this power was transmitted and multiplied. These were used in cranes and aboard ships during Ancient Greece, and in mines, water pumps and siege engines in Ancient Rome. The writers of those times, including Vitruvius, Frontinus and Pliny the Elder, treat these engines as commonplace, so their invention may be far more ancient. By the 1st century AD, various breeds of cattle and horses were used in mills, using machines similar to those powered by humans in earlier times.

According to Strabo, a water powered mill was built in Kaberia in the kingdom of Mithridates in the 1st century BC. Use of water wheels in mills spread through Europe over the next few centuries. Some were quite complex, with aqueducts, dams, and sluices to maintain and channel the water, and systems of gears, or toothed-wheels made of wood with metal, used to regulate the speed of rotation. In a poem by Ausonius in the 4th century, he mentions a stone-cutting saw powered by water. Hero of Alexandria demonstrated both wind and steam powered machines in the 1st century, although it is not known if these were put to any practical use.

Modern



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. (Dugald Clark) 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. 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 finished his engine on New Year's Eve and was granted a patent for it in 1879. 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 centre 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.

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 efficiencies available. 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 don't 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.

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Mercedes V6 engine in 1996
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School model of engine
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School model of an engine


In today’s world, there has been a growing emphasis on the pollution producing features of automotive power systems. This has created new interest in alternate power sources and internal-combustion engine refinements that were not economically feasible in prior years. Although a few limited-production battery-powered electric vehicles have appeared, they have not proved to be competitive owing to costs and operating characteristics. In the twenty-first century the diesel engine has been increasing in popularity with automobile owners. However, the gasoline engine, with its new emission-control devices to improve emission performance, has not yet been challenged significantly.

The first half of the twentieth century saw a trend to increase 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. In passenger cars, V-8 layouts were adopted for all piston displacements greater than 250 cubic inches (4 litres).

The design principles favoured in Europe, because of economic and other restraints, leant toward smaller cars and corresponding 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).

Earlier automobile engine development produced a much larger range of engines than is in common use today. Engines have ranged from 1 to 12 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 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 tonnes, and when running at 102 r/min produces 109000bhp (80080 kW) consuming some 13.7 tonnes of fuel each hour.

Air-breathing engines

Air-breathing engines use atmospheric air to oxidise 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. Air-breathing engines include:

References

  • J. G. Landels, Engineering in the Ancient World, ISBN
0-520-04127-5

See also

External links

Engineering is the applied science of acquiring and applying knowledge to design, analysis, and/or construction of works for practical purposes. The American Engineers' Council for Professional Development, also known as ECPD,[1] (later ABET [2]
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kinetic energy of an object is the extra energy which it possesses due to its motion. It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its current velocity.
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Fuel is any material that is burnt or altered in order to obtain energy.[1] Fuel releases its energy either through chemical means, such as combustion, or nuclear means, such as nuclear fission or nuclear fusion.
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prime mover is an English translation of the Latin Primum Mobile. The original latin refers to a "first cause" of motion in the theological sense, and was used during the scholastic era to explain how God was the cause of all movement and hence of all life in the world.
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Types of motors include:
  • Electric motor, a machine that converts electricity into a mechanical motion
  • Thermodynamic motor or heat engine, a machine that converts heat into mechanical motion
  • Molecular motors, the essential agents of movement in living organisms

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English}}} 
Writing system: Latin (English variant) 
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng  
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A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates the cotton fibers from the seedpods and the sometimes sticky seeds. These seeds were either used again to grow more cotton or if badly damaged were disposed of.
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Industrial Revolution was a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation had a profound effect on socioeconomic and cultural conditions in Britain and subsequently spread throughout the world, a process that
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steam engine is an external combustion heat engine that makes use of the heat energy that exists in steam, converting it to mechanical work.

Steam engines were used as the prime mover in pumping stations, locomotives, steam ships, traction engines, steam lorries and other
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Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems.
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search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information which must be consulted, akin to other techniques for managing
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A game engine is the core software component of a computer video game or other interactive application with real-time graphics. It provides the underlying technologies, simplifies development, and often enables the game to run on multiple platforms such as game consoles and desktop
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A layout engine, or rendering engine, is software that takes web content (such as HTML, XML, image files, etc.) and formatting information (such as CSS, XSL, etc.) and displays the formatted content on the screen.
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Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware.
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difference engine is a special-purpose mechanical digital calculator, designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Since logarithmic and trigonometric functions can be approximated by polynomials, such a machine is more general than it appears at first.
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catapult is any siege engine which uses an arm to hurl a projectile a great distance, though the term is generally understood to mean medieval siege weapons. The name is derived from the Greek κατά (against) and βαλλεῖν (to
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A siege engine is a device that is designed to break or circumvent city walls and other fortifications in siege warfare.

Ancient siege engines

The earliest siege engine was the battering ram, followed by the catapult in ancient Greece.
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In physics, mechanical work is the amount of energy transferred by a force. Like energy, it is a scalar quantity, with SI units of joules. Heat conduction is not considered to be a form of work, since there is no macroscopically measurable force, only microscopic forces occurring
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torque (or often called a moment) can informally be thought of as "rotational force" or "angular force" which causes a change in rotational motion. This force is defined by linear force multiplied by a radius.

The SI unit for torque is the newton meter (N m). In U.S.
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Electricity (from New Latin ēlectricus, "amberlike") is a general term for a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. This includes many well-known physical phenomena such as lightning, electromagnetic fields and electric currents,
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pump is a device used to move liquids or slurries. A pump moves liquids from lower pressure to higher pressure, and overcomes this difference in pressure by adding energy to the system (such as a water system).
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<includeonly></includeonly>A gas compressor is a mechanical device that increases the pressure of a gas by reducing its volume. Compression of a gas naturally increases its temperature.
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Fuel is any material that is burnt or altered in order to obtain energy.[1] Fuel releases its energy either through chemical means, such as combustion, or nuclear means, such as nuclear fission or nuclear fusion.
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rocket is a vehicle, missile or aircraft which obtains thrust by the reaction to the ejection of fast moving fluid from within a rocket engine.

The history of rockets goes back to at least the 13th century[1].
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Specific impulse (usually abbreviated Isp) is a way to describe the efficiency of rocket and jet engines. It represents the impulse (change in momentum) per unit of propellant.
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rocket engine is a reaction engine that takes all its reaction mass from within tankage and forms it into a high speed jet, thereby obtaining thrust in accordance with Newton's third law.
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simple machine is any device that only requires the application of a single force to work. Work is done when a force is applied and results in movement over a set distance. The work done is the product of the force and the distance.
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A development of the club, a mace consists of a strong, heavy wooden, metal-reinforced, or metal shaft, with a head made of stone, copper, bronze, iron or steel. The mace was the first weapon made specifically for use against humans, rather than using hunting weapons to fight with.
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OAR may refer to:
  • Original aspect ratio
  • Marina Municipal Airport (IATA code: OAR), an airport in Marina, California
  • Office of AIDS Research, part of the United States National Institutes of Health
  • Of A Revolution, an American rock band

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lever (from French lever, "to raise", c.f. a levant) is a rigid object that is used with an appropriate fulcrum or pivot point to multiply the mechanical force that can be applied to another object.
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