PISTON ENGINE

DESCRIPTION
• An aircraft piston engine, also commonly referred to
as a reciprocating engine or "recip", is an internal
combustion engine that uses one or more
reciprocating pistons to convert pressure into a
rotational motion.
• The aircraft piston engine operates on the same
principles as the engines found in most automobiles.
• However, modifications, such as dual ignition
systems, to improve redundancy and safety, and air
cooling to reduce weight, have been incorporated
into engines designed for aviation use. 
 Engine Types
•  In-Line Engines
• Rotary Engines
• V-Type Engines
• Radial Engines
• Horizontally Opposed Engines
 INLINE ENGINE
• The earliest aircraft engines were of the in-line
or "straight" variety and had the cylinders in a
line, similar to many automotive engines.
• The main advantage to this engine type is that
it is narrow and allows the aircraft to have a
narrow front fuselage.
• However, airflow around this engine type is
inadequate to allow air cooling so liquid
cooling is required thus reducing the power to
weight ratio.
 ROTARY ENGINE
• Rotary piston engines were developed during
World War I for military aircraft.
• In this design, the entire engine rotates with the
propeller, creating additional airflow for cooling.
• V-TYPE ENGINE
• A V-type engine is basically the equivalent of
two in-line engines joined in a "V" configuration
by a common crankshaft.
 RADIAL ENGINE
• A radial piston engine consists of one or more
rows of odd-numbered cylinders arranged in a
circle around a central crankshaft.
• Due to the small size of the crankcase, this
engine type had a better power to weight
ratio than most other designs of their day.
• The cylinder arrangement allowed for good
cooling airflow and smooth operation.
 OPPOSED ENGINES
• Horizontally opposed engines are often
referred to as boxer or flat engines.
• They have two banks of cylinders staggered on
opposite sides of a central crankcase. The
design is simple, reliable and easy to maintain.
 The Four-Stroke Cycle
• Intake: The piston moves down in the cylinder, drawing in air and
fuel through the open intake valve.
• Compression: The intake and exhaust valves in the cylinder close
and the piston moves up in the cylinder, compressing the fuel-air
mixture.
• Power: As the piston nears the top of the cylinder during the
compression stroke, a burst of electricity from the ignition system
generates a spark in the spark plugs. The sparks ignite the air/fuel
mixture, which expands rapidly as it burns. The force of this
expansion drives the piston back down in the cylinder. As the piston
moves down, it turns the crankshaft, which turns the propeller.
• Exhaust: When the piston reaches the bottom of the cylinder, the
exhaust valve opens. The piston then moves back up in the cylinder,
pushing the burned air/fuel mixture out of the cylinder.
Each cylinder cycles through these four strokes in turn, ensuring
that at least one piston is always producing power.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea0B4vP
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 Carburetors and Fuel Injectors
• Most piston engines used in aircraft have either
a carburetor or fuel injection system to deliver
fuel and air to the cylinders.
• The carburetor mixes fuel and air before it
enters the cylinders.
• Carburetors are common on smaller engines
because they're relatively inexpensive.
• Larger engines usually have fuel-injection
systems, which squirt fuel directly into the
cylinders, where it mixes with air during the
intake stroke.
 Ignition Systems
• The ignition system provides a spark to ignite the
air/fuel mixture in the cylinders of a piston engine.
Most modern aircraft engines use magnetos to
generate the spark.
• Although not as sophisticated as the electronic
ignition systems used in the latest cars, magnetos
are useful in aircraft because:
• They produce a hotter spark at high engine speeds
than the battery system used in automobiles.
• They do not depend on an external source of energy
such as a battery, a generator, or an alternator
 Dual Ignition
• Most aircraft engines are equipped with a dual ignition
system—two magnetos that supply electrical current to two
spark plugs for each cylinder.
• One magneto system supplies the current to one set of plugs;
the second system supplies the current to the other set of
plugs.
• This is why the ignition switch on the Cessna Skyhawk SP
Model 172 (marked as MAGNETO on some planes) has five
positions: OFF, L (left), R (right), BOTH, and START. With the
switch in the L or R position, only one magneto supplies
current and only one set of spark plugs fires. With the switch
in the BOTH position, both magnetos supply current and both
sets of spark plugs fire.
 magneto
• A magneto is a combination of a distributor and generator built
into one unit.
• It is unlike a conventional distributor in that it creates its own
spark energy without external voltage.
• A series of rotating magnets break an electrical field, this causes
an electrical current in the coil’s primary windings.
• This current charge is multiplied when it transfers to the coil’s
secondary windings.
• Because there are as many more times the number of windings
in the secondary circuit as there were in the primary circuit.
• This multiplied charge causes the magneto to produce a spark
at a much higher voltage than was created by the primary
windings.
• In some cases, the voltage can be as high as 20,000 volts —
resulting in a much hotter spark than a conventional distributor
can produce.
• A set of contact breaker-points, traveling over a
cam lobe and serving much the same function as
the contacts in a conventional distributor,
regulates the electrical impulse to set the timing.
• The points act as an interrupter to the magnetic
circuit, which allows a fixed charge to enter the
secondary coil circuit, and a condenser acts as a
ground to disperse the primary’s magnetic
charge until the next armature rotation.
• The quality of the spark voltage will improve as
engine speeds increase because the magnets are
spinning faster and firing the primary windings
more often.
 Working on battery ignition system
• In the Battery ignition system as the ignition switch is ON, the
current from the battery starts to flow through the primary
circuit through ballast register, primary winding and contact
breaker.
• The current flowing through the primary winding induces
magnetic field around it. The more will be the current, the
stronger will its magnetic field.
• As the contact breaker opens, the current through the
primary winding collapse and this immediate collapse in the
current induces a voltage of about 300V in the primary
winding.
• This voltage induced in the winding charges the capacitor to
the much greater voltage than the battery.
• As the capacitor charged, the current through the primary
winding stops and the current starts to flow to the battery
form the capacitor.
• This reverses the direction of current and magnetic field in
the primary winding.
• Due to the collapsing and reversing of the current and
magnetic field, a very high voltage of about 15000 to 30000
V induced in the secondary winding.
• The high voltage current induced in the secondary winding is
transferred to the distributor through a high tension cable.
• The distributor has a rotor that rotates inside the distributor
cap.
• The distributor cap has metallic segments embedded into it.
As the rotor rotates, it presses and opens the contact
breaker point.
• This allows the high tension current to transfer to the spark
plugs through the metallic segments.
• As the high tension current reaches the spark Plug, it
produces spark in the engine cylinder for the combustion of
the air-fuel mixture.