Automobile Engines
The working of an automobile engine follows the same principle as an internal combustion engine. Air, from outside, enters the engine through the air cleaner and reaches the throttle plate.
The pedal in your car is the control for the amount of air that you would want to be taken in, and you control it by pressing on this gas pedal.
The air is then distributed through the intake manifold of the cylinders.
At some point fuel is injected into the air stream, and the mixture vaporizes and is drawn into the cylinders as they start their intake stroke.
This way, when the cylinder has reached its bottom, it has drawn in sufficient mixture. As it moves up, compressing the mixture, the spark plug ignites the mixture, and as the powerful gas formed expands, it pushes the cylinder to the bottom with the cylinder once again drawing in the mixture.
In designing automobile engines, you need to be a specialist in automobile engineering.
The consideration that is taken while designing such an engine is whether it should be a carburetor or a diesel one. carburetor engines are most commonly found in passenger cars and low capacity trucks, while trucks with a capacity over two tons are fitted with diesel engines, including dump trucks, trailer tractors and bus.
Increasingly the medium and low-capacity vehicles are being fitted with diesel engines, since the fuel consumption of these engines are 30% to 50% lower than the carburetor engines.
Diesel engines not only cost more, but maintenance is much more expensive than the other type of engine. Diesels require more metal parts per kilowatt.
The critical parts of diesel engines are made of alloy steel, and the fuel injection system is much more expensive than carburetor engines.
How to make a career in Automotive Engineering
To make a career in automotive engineering, there are several engineering technology programs that are offered as various academic courses helping you to specialize in designing vehicles, such as, cars, trucks, etc.
You gather the expertise in providing help to build and test the vehicles, and learn how to repair and maintain with the appropriate tools and instruments. When you watch TV, you come across commercials advertising cars and other vehicles.
If you ponder for once how much it costs the vehicle manufacturers to advertise, you would be able to realise how vast the automobile industry is. If you watch the commercials closely, you will find that features of the vehicle are advertised also, such as, side air-bags, disappearing fold down seats, gas-electric hybrids, and many more.
It is evident that someone had to design these features which are now being made available in the vehicle.
When designing a vehicle, the design break-through comes from the automobile engineers, who have the specialization to design automobiles.
The job that you have as an automobile design engineer is to design the components that go into the vehicle, test them in the laboratory, and qualify them as the components which have been correctly designed. Automobile design engineers put the concept of a vehicle into reality.
-
-
Think Engineering
