DIFFERENT TYPES OF

ENGINES
BURAC, LIRAY, MACAYA
ENGINE

 An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one form of energy into mechanical energy. Heat
engines convert heat into work via various thermodynamic processes. 
 THERMAL ENGINES

They function either through direct combustion of a propellant or through the transformation of a fluid to generate
work. As such, most thermal engines also see some overlap with chemical drive systems. They can be airbreathing
engines (that take oxidizer such as oxygen from the atmosphere) or non-airbreathing engines (that have oxidizers
chemically tied in the fuel).
 INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES

 Internal combustion engines (IC engines) are pretty ubiquitous

today. They power cars, lawnmowers, helicopters, and so
on. The biggest IC engine can generate 109,000 HP to power a
ship that moves 20,000 containers.
 IC engines derive energy from fuel burned inside a specialized
area of the system called a combustion chamber. The process of
combustion generates reaction products (exhaust) with a much
greater total volume than that of the reactants combined (fuel
and oxidizer)
 INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES

 IC engines are differentiated by the number of ‘strokes’ or

cycles each piston makes for a full rotation of the crankshaft.
Most common today are four-stroke engines, which break
down the combustion reaction in four steps:
1. Induction or injection of a fuel-air mix (the carburate) into the
combustion chamber.
2. Compression of the mix.
3. Ignition by a spark plug or compression — fuel goes boom.
4. Emission of the exhaust.
 Petrol & Diesel engine is an example of internal combustion
engine, where the working fluid is a mixture of air and fuel .
 EXTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES

 External combustion engines (EC engines) keep the fuel and

exhaust products separately — they burn fuel in one chamber and
heat the working fluid inside the engine through a heat exchanger
or the engine’s wall. That grand daddy-o of the Industrial
Revolution, the steam engine, falls into this category.
 In some respects, EC engines function similarly to their IC
counterparts — they both require heat which is obtained by
burning stuff. 
 EXTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES

 EC engines use fluids that undergo thermal dilation-

contraction or a shift in phase, but whose chemical
composition remains unaltered. The fluid used can either
be gaseous (as in the Stirling engine), liquid (the
Organic Rankine cycle engine), or undergo a change of
phase (as in the steam engine) — for IC engines, the
fluid is almost universally a liquid fuel and air mixture
that combusts (changes its chemical composition).
 Nuclear power applications have the distinction of being Stirling Engine
called non-combustive or external thermal
engines since they operate on the same principles of EC
engines but don’t derive their power from combustion.
 REACTION ENGINES

 Reaction engines, commonly known as jet engines, generate

thrust by expelling reactionary mass. The basic principle behind
a reactionary engine is Newton’s Third Law — basically, if you
blow something with enough force through the back end of the
engine, it will push the front end forward.
 airbreathing jet engines fall under the turbine-powered class of
engines. Ramjet engines, which are usually considered simpler
and more reliable as they contain fewer (up to none) moving
parts, are also airbreathing jet engines but fall into the ram-
powered class. The difference between the two is that ramjets
rely on sheer speed to feed air into the engine, whereas turbojets
use turbines to draw in and compress air into the combustion
chamber.
REACTION ENGINES
 In turbojets, air is drawn into the engine chamber and
compressed by a rotating turbine. Ramjets draw and
compress it by going really fast. Inside the engine, it’s
mixed with high-power fuel and ignited.
 When you concentrate air (and thus oxygen), mix it up
with a lot of fuel and detonate it (thus generating
exhaust and thermally expanding all the gas), you get
a reactionary product that has a huge volume
compared to the air drawn in. The only place all this
mass of gasses can go through is to the back end of the
engine, which it does with extreme force
 This piece of hardware forces all the gas to pass
through an even smaller space than it initially came in
by — thus further accelerating it into ‘a jet’ of matter.
The exhaust exits the engine at incredible speeds, up
to three times the speed of sound, pushing the plane
forward.