Internal Combustion Engine (2021)

bell-cot

[2021] Originally 2333 points and 392 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26991300

felooboolooomba

Pro tip: Show a message if WebGL is disabled instead of a blank space.

mrhottakes

Excellent animations.

bob1029

> Presence of oil is critical here as it creates conditions for hydrodynamic lubrication. You can hear this effect in some vehicles at initial startup time for a few seconds. I know of certain Ford engines where it actually causes issues over time. The model years with auto start/stop have the worst of the cam rattle disease.

fauria

" in real running engines the rotating crankshaft should float completely on a very thin surface of oil " - I found this to be a great insight.

CraigJPerry

The thing that's missing here that really drastically changes the story is all the emissions control hardware that would exist on such an engine. This is a circa 1990s engine in the US market i think? Dual Overhead Cam didn't really become popular in the US market until then i think. 70s-80s for single overhead cam to become established. The diagrams are beautiful and informative as always from this author.

MarkusWandel

Wonderful but it irritates me that so many descriptions of internal combustion engines refer to "explosions" of the fuel. You don't want that. It causes knocking and pinging and engine damage. You want a controlled burn that generates heat smoothly.

mberning

If you like this kind of stuff go and look up videos on the Rolls Royce Crecy engine from WWII. Absolutely insane engineering that died due the dawn of jet propulsion.

relaxing

Very interesting technology. Would be exciting to see a hardware startup build a product around this.

londons_explore

Worth noting the design of the internal combustion engine hasn't changed much in 50 years. The thing that has changed is the control systems. What used to be a primitive mechanical way of mixing fuel and air (the carburettor), is now an electronic fuel injection system, with the fuel air ratio very carefully matched to reduce pollution (fun fact: modern cars release so little carbon monoxide, you won't kill yourself by starting one in a garage (but don't try it just incase your car is faulty)). Catalytic converters use any tiny fuel air imbalance to reduce carbon monoxide and soot, and on the other side nitrous oxides, by slightly increasing and decreasing fuel air ratios.

jtwaleson

I'm showing this page to my team and investors every couple of weeks. Visual, animated explanations are MUCH better than textual content for deeply grokking something. This is what we're trying to build for large software systems. I love the animations on this site so much, thank you for building them.

nickvec

I hope Ciechanowski posts some more in the near future. He has some of the best "how does this work" articles I've come across.

drayfield

Always good to revisit his older work, though I admit I did get excited that it was a new post!

duped

This is a stupid question but I'm a stupid EE/SWE who knows very little about physical objects. In the all these animations of the pistons I see linear motion translated into rotary motion using the crank shaft - but how do you design the pison/crank to always turn clockwise or counter clockwise (based on how you view it, obviously)? Is it possible for the crank shaft to lock up if it's perfectly oriented at 0 degrees?

gwbas1c

When I was a kid, pre-internet, my dad took me to the local library and checked out some books that explained how an engine works. These animations are so much better than what I had!

vjvjvjvjghv

This should probably be called “Four Strike Engine”. There are other types of ICE that work differently.

rootusrootus

I still remember the first time I tore down a pushrod V8. I decided it had to be close to the pinnacle of elegant design. Nothing wasted, everything had a purpose, and it all came together in a perfect mechanical symphony. We have since made engines which are significantly more efficient and powerful, but all of that at the cost of elegance, slapping on overhead cams and machinery just to adjust the valve timing, etc. Fantastic technology in it's own right for certain, but feels tacked on, like an expensive optimization. Reminds me that I want to get something for my kids to work on which will maybe show them some of that same elegance. I don't currently have any V8s in the garage to go tear down :)

plasticeagle

Who is this person. A beautifully written and illustrated explanation of a fascinating machine. A website filled with other explanations of other things, also wonderfully written and clearly explained. An instagram filled with beautiful landscape photographs, an "X" page consisting only of links back to this blog, and a Patreon with hardly any more information that that. I love this. Fantastic content. Zero ego. And if there was any AI use, it's invisible. Certainly there is none in the writing.

RecycledEle

This is an excellent explanation! Thank you!

userbinator

While they look perfectly round, piston skirts are actually slightly oval. ...something which has been the case for at least 80 years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397926 (the article in that link has now moved to https://www.web.imperialclub.info/Repair/Lit/Master/003/inde... )