Internal combustion engine is an engine, in which the fuel is burned (that is, united with oxygen) within the engine itself. If you put a tiny amount of high-energy fuel (like gasoline) in a small, enclosed space and ignite it, an incredible amount of energy is released in the form of expanding gases. The expanding gases are converted into mechanical energy through the various components of the engine. We will be discussing the history of the internal combustion engine, the four major types, and their internal components.
The history of the internal combustion engine started in 1680 with a Dutch astronomer, Christian Huygens, who applied the idea developed by Jean de Hautefeuille in 1678 for drawing water experimented with internal combustion. Huygen’s design was based on the fact that the explosion of a small amount of gunpowder in a closed chamber that incorporated escape valves would create a vacuum when the gases of combustion cooled.
Francois Issac de Rivaz built the first internal combustion engine in 1807, although his engine lacked power and used a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen for fuel.
Jean Lenoir invented the first practical internal-combustion engine in 1858. It used coal gas that was drawn into a cylinder at the start of its stroke and then ignited to push the piston to the other end of the cylinder. This process would be repeated at the other end of the cylinder on the other side of the piston pushing it back the other way. It would be several years til an internal combustion engine would be commercially available.
Nikolaus A. Otto built the first successful four-stroke reciprocating engine in 1876, which became known as the Otto cycle engine. Otto improved on Jean Lenoir’s engine. This design was the most efficient to date and found itself in industrial applications.
Then in 1885 Gottlieb Daimler developed what is known as the modern gasoline engine. Gottlieb was credited for the use of a carburetor to deliver gasoline to the engine. Most modern automotive engines used today are direct descendants of Gottlieb Daimler’s design.
In 1892 Rudolf Diesel, a German engineer came up with the idea of a compression ignition engine. He originally designed the engine to be use coal dust as a fuel, but started using various oils. Eventually fuel oil, also know as diesel fuel, was the choice fuel.
There are several types of internal combustion engines. There are four different types of internal combustion engines that are widely used today. The most common design is the reciprocating engine such as the Otto cycle engine and the diesel engine. Rotary engines, such as the Wankel engine are another popular engine used today. Then there is the gas-turbine engine, which is gaining popularity for its ability to produce high shaft horsepower.
The primary difference between the gasoline Otto cycle, or four-stroke engine as its commonly known, and the diesel engine is the ignition type and fuel used as they share the basic internals. They both are piston based engines of the, most commonly, four-stroke design.
In a four-stroke engine, the combustion chamber consists of a cylinder, which is closed at one end by a cylinder head. In the cylinder there is a close tolerance piston which travels in an in and out motion. The in and out motion of the piston changes the volume and pressure of the chamber between the inner face of the piston and the cylinder head. The outer face of the piston is attached to a crankshaft by a connecting rod. The crankshaft transforms the reciprocating motion of the piston into rotating motion. There are valves which open allowing the air / fuel to flow into the combustion chamber and the burned exhaust to flow out of the combustion chamber. The valves are connected to camshaft by the push rods. The camshaft dictates when and how much the valves open. In the gasoline engine there is a carburetor, which plays two roles. It meters the correct amount of gasoline to the desired amount of air being drawn into the engine and it has to atomize the fuel for an efficient burn. The engine then uses a spark from a spark plug to ignite the air / fuel mixture at the correct time starting the combustion process. Advances in electronically controlled engines have increased the power output and reduce the emissions discharged by the engines to meet the emission standards or today.
The diesel engine contains all the same parts of the four-stroke engine except it does not have a carburetor for fuel delivery. It uses fuel injectors to inject fuel directly into the combustion chamber. The compression ratio of a diesel engine is so high that when the air in the cylinder is compressed, the temperature of the compressed air is high enough to ignite the fuel when it is injected into the cylinder at the correct time, thus no spark is needed to start the combustion process. Advances in electronically controlled engines have increased the power output and reduce the emissions discharged by the engines to meet the emission standards or today.
Diesel engines have power ratings from as low as one or two horsepower all the way up to over two hundred thousand horsepower and over five million ft. lbs. of torque in large container ships.
Secondly, there is the rotary engine. In 1956 the German engineer Felix Wankel developed his concept of an internal-combustion engine with a radically new design. This new design uses approximately 48% less parts than the typical reciprocating engine and has one third the size and mass. The rotary engine takes the four strokes of the Otto cycle engine and incorporates them in one circle. The rotary engine has only three strokes for the complete combustion process. The cycle alternately takes place at each face of the rotor, giving three power strokes for each turn of the rotor.
The Wankel engine incorporates a three-cornered, triangular rotor turning in a roughly oval chamber replacing the piston and cylinder. The fuel-air mixture is taken in through an intake port and trapped between one face of the turning rotor and the wall of the oval chamber. The turning of the rotor compresses the mixture, which is ignited by a spark plug. The exhaust gases are then forced out through an exhaust port through the action of the turning rotor. Advances in electronically controlled engines have increased the power output and reduce the emissions discharged by the engines to meet the emission standards or today.

Finally there is the gas turbine engine. The turbine design derived from an 1882 Wisconsin power station in which water poured over a wheel with buckets. As the buckets filled it turned the wheel. The wheel was connected to a shaft that drove a generator. The gas turbine engine uses gas flow as the working medium by which heat energy is transformed into useful mechanical energy. Gas is produced in the engine by the combustion of certain fuels. A gas turbine includes a compressor that pumps and compresses air into a combustion chamber. Fuel in gaseous or atomized liquid form is also injected into this chamber, and combustion takes place there. The burned gases pass from the chamber through nozzles to the turbine wheel. The nozzles then discharge jets of this burned gas against the blades of a turbine wheel. The burned gases continue to expand until they are completely expelled form the engine. The force of the ever expanding gases out the jets causes the turbine wheel to rotate. The turbine wheel and compressor are connected to a common shaft and can also be coupled to another shaft to drive a load such as a generator or used for ship propulsion. Turbines can incorporate multistaging, in which there are stationary blades between multiple compressor and turbine wheels direct more flow against the following compressor or turbine blades making the process more efficient. Some large gas turbines used in power plants even use the heat expelled from the exhaust to heat water in a boiler to steam and run in conjunction with a steam turbine increasing the efficiency of the initial gas turbine by as much as 50%. Advances in components and electronically controlled engines have increased the power output and reduce the emissions discharged by the engines to meet the emission standards or today.

These are the most common types of internal combustion engines. Although there have been minor changes from manufacturer to manufacturer, the basic designs have remained unchanged since their conception. Technological advances in all the engine designs continue to produce more and more powerful and more efficient engine every day.

http://www.inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blotto.htm
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http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0849718.html
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http://www.asme.org/igti/resources/articles/intro2gtb.html

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