How a Jet Engine Works

This is a picture of how the air flows through a jet engine. Jet engines move the airplane forward with a great force that is produced by a tremendous thrust and causes the plane to fly very fast. All jet engines, which are also called gas turbines, work on the same principle. The engine sucks air in at the front with a fan. A compressor raises the pressure of the air. The compressor is made up of fans with many blades and attached to a shaft. The blades compress the air. The compressed air is then sprayed with fuel and an electric spark lights the mixture. The burning gases expand and blast out through the nozzle, at the back of the engine....

How Rotary Engines Work

A rotary engine is an internal combustion engine, like the engine in your car, but it works in a completely different way than the conventional piston engine. In a piston engine, the same volume of space (the cylinder) alternately does four different jobs -- intake, compression, combustion and exhaust. A rotary engine does these sam­e four jobs, but each one happens in its own part of the housing. It's kind of like having a dedicated cylinder for each of the four jobs, with the piston moving continually from one to the next. The rotary engine (originally conceived and developed by Dr. Felix Wankel) is sometimes called a Wankel engine, or...

Inside Engines

Here at HowStuffWorks we have hundreds of articles on a wide variety of topics; each article is grouped together in one of ten super-categories or, as we like to call them -- channels. You can find out all about computers and related technology on the ComputerStuff channel. For information about everything from installing hardwood flooring to learning how your refrigerator works, you can check out the HomeStuff channel. For all of you that find anything from rip currents to radar fascinating, you can find it on the ScienceStuff channel. And, so on ... Out of all these channels and articles, though, there are a some things that really resonate...

How an Atkinson Cycle Engine Works

For over a hundred years, engines got bigger, faster, and meaner, with more horsepower and torque. Exhaust belched from the tailpipes like a dragon awoken from its slumber to roar at potential thieves of its treasure. At least, that's what the guy with the wide tires and the airbrushed flame job wants you to think. Then came the twentieth century, when we realized that fire-breathing engines were slaying more than red-light drag racing opponents. Turns out, all that belching was changing the climate and creating nasty smog. Too many dragons were making the planet more like Mordor than the Shire. Who can save us from these exhaust-belching...

How Sleeve-valve Engines Work

During World War II, engineers within the Nazi regime devised some of the best and most-advanced aerial weaponry of the era. One German fighter plane, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, for a time outperformed anything the Allies could put in the air. Fortunately for the Allies, engineering on their side eventually swung the air superiority pendulum to their advantage. A rugged, unconventional engine that many people today have probably never even heard of helped to neutralize the Fw 190 and the rest of the Luftwaffe. In its own way, an engine helped propel the Allies to victory [source: Rickard]. The sleeve-valve engine, which has been used on both automobiles...