The cylinder principle comes from the cannon
In 1680, Dutch scientist Hoines was inspired by the principle of the cannon, and thought, wouldn't it be nice to use the powerful power of the cannon ball to push other machinery? He started with gunpowder as an incendiary explosive, changing the shell to a "piston" and the barrel to a "cylinder" and opening a one-way valve. He filled the cylinder with gunpowder, which, when ignited, exploded violently, pushing the piston upward and generating power. At the same time, the huge pressure of the explosion gas also pushed the check valve, exhaust gas. Then, the residual exhaust gas in the cylinder gradually cools, the air pressure becomes low, and the atmospheric pressure outside the cylinder pushes the piston downward in preparation for the next explosion. Of course, because of the long journey and inefficiency, he did not succeed in the end. But it was Hoynes who first proposed the idea of an internal combustion engine, on which later generations would develop the engine for cars.
Early cars used single-cylinder engines
When Karl Benz and Daimler designed and built their cars, they both used a single cylinder engine. Just as we don't think it's possible for a car to have two or more engines, it's unlikely that people at the time would have imagined an engine with two or more cylinders. But it's different now, don't say rich countries first, and see the domestic car ads, many manufacturers total engine cylinder number and arrangement of forms, for one thing, to sell mini to blow his car is four cylinder drum machine, rather than the three cylinder with v6 engine must make v marked highlighted, advertising has played a very big effect really, Many car fans have agreed with the concept of "4 cylinder is better than 3 cylinder", "6 cylinder is better than 4 cylinder", "V-type is better than inline", "V-type is superior engine" and so on. Nearly 20 Korean cars already have V6 or V8 engines.
The crankshaft of a single-cylinder engine produces only one combustion every two weeks, so its sound also sounds discontinuous and smooth, as the sound of a small-displacement motorcycle shows. Most unpalatable of all was its erratic operation, wide variations in revs, and the single-cylinder engine's shape was unsuitable for a car. As a result, single-cylinder engines are no longer seen in cars, and two-cylinder engines are hard to find, at least 3-cylinder engines. Domestic production of Huali van, the old Xiali car, Geely haoqing and Aotuo, Air, installed are 3 cylinder machine.
Multi-purpose 3 cylinder machine is used on the miniature car below 1 litres, the engine that rises to 2 litres uses 4 cylinder or 5 cylinder machine commonly. Most of the engines above 2 liters are 6 cylinders, and most of the engines above 4 liters use 8 cylinders.
At the same displacement, increasing the number of cylinders can increase the engine speed, which can improve the engine power output. In addition, increasing the number of cylinders makes the engine run more smoothly, making its torque and power output more stable. Increasing the number of cylinders makes it easier to start and more responsive to acceleration. In order to improve the performance of the gas vehicle, the number of cylinders must be increased. Therefore, luxury cars, sports cars, racing cars and other high-performance gas vehicles are more than 6 cylinders, the most has reached 16 cylinders.
However, the increase in the number of cylinders cannot be unlimited. As the number of cylinders increases, the number of parts in an engine increases proportionally, which complicates the engine structure, reduces the reliability of the engine, increases the weight of the engine, increases the cost of manufacturing and operation, increases fuel consumption, and increases the size of the engine. Therefore, the number of cylinders of the gas vehicle engine is based on the purpose and performance requirements of the engine, after weighing various advantages and disadvantages to make the appropriate choice.
Line engine, with all cylinders arranged side by side in a plane, has a simple cylinder block and crankshaft structure, and uses a single cylinder head. It has low manufacturing cost, high stability, good low-speed torque characteristics, low fuel consumption, compact size and wide application. Its disadvantage is low power. "In line" can be represented by L, followed by the number of cylinders is the engine code, modern cars mainly have L3, L4, L5, L6 engines.