Term Papers on Ignition System

Term Paper Title	Ignition System
# of Words	861
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.44

Ignition system
The ignition system of an internal-combustion engine is an important part of the overall engine system. It provides for the timely burning of the fuel mixture within the engine. Not all engine types need an ignition system - for example, a diesel engine relies on compression-ignition, that is, the rise in temperature that accompanies the rise in pressure within the cylinder is sufficient to ignite the fuel spontaneously. All conventional petrol engines, by contrast, require an ignition system.

Contact ignition

The earliest petrol engines used a very crude ignition system. This often took the form of a copper or brass rod which protruded into the cylinder, which was heated using an external source. The fuel would ignite when it came into contact with the rod. Naturally this was very inefficient as the fuel would not be ignited in a controlled manner. This type of arrangement was quickly superseded by spark ignition, a system which is generally used to this day, albeit with sparks generated by more sophisticated circuitry.

Magneto system

The simplest form of spark ignition is that using a magneto. The engine spins a magnet inside a coil, and also operates a contact breaker, interrupting the current and causing the voltage to be increased sufficiently to jump a small gap. The spark plugs are connected directly from the magneto output. Magnetos are not used in modern cars, but they are often found on 2-stroke engines and also in aircraft piston engines, where their simplicity and self-contained nature confers a generally greater reliability as well as lighter weight. Aircraft engines usually have multiple magnetos to provide redundancy in the event of a failure.

Mechanical ignition

Most four-stroke engines have used a mechanical ignition system. Here, the power source is a battery, kept charged by the car's electrical system, which generates electricity using a dynamo or alternator. The engine operates contact breaker points, which interrupt the current flow to a coil - a form of autotransformer. This steps up the voltage, which is fed via a rotating switch called a distributor to the spark plugs. This sytem is not greatly different from a magneto system, except that more separate elements are involved. There are also advantages to this arrangement, for example the position of the contact breaker points relative to the engine angle can be changed a small amount dynamically, allowing the ignition timing to be automatically advanced with increasing RPM, giving better efficiency. This sytem was used almost universally until the late 1970s, when electronic ignition systems started to appear.

Electronic ignition

The disadvantag...

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