ME 152

Report No 2
Gasoline Engine

Objective
To study the principle of operation of a gasoline engine and to study the principle and
operation of the different systems such as the fuel system, lubricating system, cooling system
and electrical ignition.

Theory
Gasoline engine operates on a four-stroke cycle basis. The power is derived from the
combustion of air and fuel mixture ignited by an electric spark. That is why engines are also
known as spark ignition engines. The following are four main steps of an engine.
1. Intake stroke -- The intake valve opens up, letting in air and moving the piston down.
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2. Compression stroke -- The piston moves back up and compresses the air.
3. Combustion stroke -- As the piston reaches the top, fuel is injected at just the right
moment and ignited, forcing the piston back down.
4. Exhaust stroke -- The piston moves back to the top, pushing out the exhaust created
from the combustion out of the exhaust valve.

Fuel system
All internal combustion engines need three things to run... Air, Fuel and Spark. The fuel
system is critical in storing and delivering the gasoline or diesel fuel your engine needs to run.
Think of it as your vascular system, with a heart (fuel pump), veins (fuel lines) and kidneys
(filter). A failure in any of these fuel system components has the same devastating effects as in
your body.
 Fuel tank:
Basically a holding tank for your fuel. When you fill up at a gas station the gas
travels down the filler tube and into the tank. In the tank there is a sending unit which
tells the gas gauge how much gas is in the tank. In recent years the gas tank has become
a little more complicated, as it now often houses the fuel pump and has more emissions
controls to prevent vapors leaking into the air.
 Fuel pump:
On newer cars the fuel pump is usually installed in the fuel tank. Older cars have
the fuel pump attached to the engine or on the frame rail between the tank and the
engine. If the pump is in the tank or on the frame rail then it is electric and is run by
your cars battery. Fuel pumps mounted to the engine use the motion of the engine to
pump the fuel, most often being driven by the camshaft, but sometimes the crankshaft.
  Fuel filter:
Clean fuel is critical to engine life and performance. Fuel injectors and
carburetors have tiny openings which clog easily so filtering the fuel is a necessity.
Filters can be before or after the fuel pump, sometimes both. They are most often made
from a paper element, but can be stainless steel or synthetic material and are designed
to be disposable in most cases. Some performance fuel filters will have a washable
mesh, which eliminated the need for replacement.
 Fuel injectors:
Most domestic cars after 1986 and earlier foreign cars came from the factory
with fuel injection. Instead of a carburetor to mix the fuel and air, a computer controls
when the fuel injectors open to let fuel into the engine. This has resulted in lower
emissions and better fuel economy. The fuel injector is basically a tiny electric valve
which opens and closes with an electric signal. In the picture below you can see the
injectors towards the outer part of the intake. By injecting the fuel close to the cylinder
head the fuel stays atomized (in tiny particles) so it will burn better when ignited by the
spark plug.
 Carburetors:
A carburetor takes the fuel and mixes it with air without computer intervention.
While simple in operation, they tend to need frequent tuning and rebuilding. This is
why newer cars have done away with carburetors in favor of fuel injection.

Materials/apparatus
The gasoline engine in the ME lab, tools

Procedure
Carefully disassemble the necessary parts of the gasoline engine. Make a thorough
study of the different systems. After getting familiarized with the entire engine. Assemble the
parts and make an illustration of the engine.

Events on a four stroke engine cycle

A four-stroke engine (also known as four-cycle) is an internal combustion engine in
which the piston completes four separate strokes which comprise a single thermodynamic
cycle. A stroke refers to the full travel of the piston along the cylinder, in either direction. The
four separate strokes are termed:

1. INTAKE: this stroke of the piston begins at top dead center. The piston descends from
the top of the cylinder to the bottom of the cylinder, increasing the volume of the
cylinder. A mixture of fuel and air is forced by atmospheric (or greater) pressure into
the cylinder through the intake port.
 2. COMPRESSION: with both intake and exhaust valves closed, the piston returns to the
top of the cylinder compressing the air or fuel-air mixture into the cylinder head.
3. POWER: this is the start of the second revolution of the cycle. While the piston is close
to Top Dead Centre (TDC), the compressed air–fuel mixture in a gasoline engine is
ignited, by a spark plug in gasoline engines, or which ignites due to the heat generated
by compression in a diesel engine. The resulting pressure from the combustion of the
compressed fuel-air mixture forces the piston back down toward Bottom Dead Center
(BDC).
4. EXHAUST: during the exhaust stroke, the piston once again returns to top dead center
while the exhaust valve is open. This action expels the spent fuel-air mixture through
the exhaust valve(s).

Two stroke cycle

In the original two-stroke cycle (as developed in 1878), the compression and power
stroke of the four-stroke cycle are carried out without the inlet and exhaust strokes, thus
requiring only one revolution of the crankshaft to complete the cycle. The fresh fuel mixture is
forced into the cylinder through circumferential ports by a rotary blower (see figure) in the
two-stroke-cycle engine of a so-called uni-flow type. The exhaust gases pass through poppet
valves in the cylinder head that are opened and closed by a cam-follower mechanism. The
valves are timed to begin opening toward the end of the power stroke, after the cylinder
pressure has dropped appreciably. The inlet ports in the cylinder wall start to uncover after the
exhaust opening has decreased the cylinder pressure to the inlet pressure produced by the
blower. The exhaust valves are allowed to remain open for a few degrees of crank rotation after
the inlet ports have been covered by the rising piston on the compression stroke, thus allowing
the persistency of flow to scavenge the cylinder more thoroughly. The compression and power
strokes are similar to those of the four-stroke engine.
References
https://www.britannica.com/technology/gasoline-engine
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140717090644-133229807-principles-and-working-of-
four-stroke-gasoline-engine
https://www.autoeducation.com/autoshop101/fuel.htm