Ignition System

Ignition system A petrol engine provides power to propel the car burning a mixture of petrol and air in its cylinders. The ignition system provides the electric sparks that ignite the mixture. Each cylinder has spark plug with two metal points called electrodes, which project into the combustion chamber. When electricity is provided or fed to the spark plug at high

enough voltage, current jumps across the gap between the electrodes in the form of a spark. Spark ignition systems are basically the same on all modern cars. The rest of the ignition system supplies electricity to the spark-plugs at a high enough voltage and at exactly the right moment in each cylinder.

A complete ignition system

Spark Timing The ignition system on your car has to work in perfect concert with the rest of the engine. The goal is to ignite the fuel at exactly the right time so that the expanding gases can do the maximum amount of work. 1

If the ignition system fires at the wrong time, power will fall and gas consumption and emissions can increase. The spark plug fires before the piston reaches top dead center. When the fuel/air mixture in the cylinder burns, the temperature rises and the fuel is converted to exhaust gas. This transformation causes the pressure in the cylinder to increase dramatically and forces the piston down.

Power In order to get the most torque and power from the engine, the goal is to maximize the pressure in the cylinder during the power stroke. Maximizing pressure will also produce the best engine efficiency, which translates directly into better mileage. The timing of the spark is critical to success. There is a small delay from the time of the spark to the time when the fuel/air mixture is all burning and the pressure in the cylinder reaches its maximum. If the spark occurs right when the piston reaches the top of the compression stroke, the piston will have already moved down part of the way into its power stroke before the gases in the cylinder have reached their highest pressures. To make the best use of the fuel, the spark should occur before the piston reaches the top of the compression stroke, so by the time the piston starts down into its power stroke the pressures are high enough to start producing useful work. Work = Force * Distance In a cylinder: Force = Pressure * Area of the piston

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Distance = Stroke length So when we're talking about a cylinder, work = pressure * piston

area * stroke length. And because the length of the stroke and the area of the piston are fixed, the only way to maximize work is by increasing pressure.

Timing The timing of the spark is important, and the timing can either be advanced or retarded depending on conditions. The time that the fuel takes to burn is roughly constant. But the speed of the pistons increases as the engine speed increases. This means that the faster the engine goes, the earlier the spark has to occur. This is called spark advance: The faster the engine speed, the more advance is required. Other goals, like minimizing emissions, take priority when maximum power is not required. For instance, by retarding the spark timing (moving the spark closer to the top of the compression stroke), maximum cylinder pressures and temperatures can be reduced. Lowering temperatures helps reduce the formation of nitrogen oxides (NOx), which are a regulated pollutant. Retarding the timing may also eliminate knocking; some cars that have knock sensors will do this automatically.

Spark Plug The spark plug is quite simple in theory: It forces electricity to arc across a gap, just like a bolt of lightning. The electricity must be at a very high voltage in order to travel across the gap and create a good spark. Voltage at the spark plug can be anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 volts.

The spark plug is in the center of the four valves in each cylinder. The spark plug must have an insulated passageway for this high voltage to travel down to the electrode, where it can jump the gap and, from there,

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be conducted into the engine block and grounded. The plug also has to

withstand the extreme heat and pressure inside the cylinder, and must be designed so that deposits from fuel additives do not build up on the plug.

Spark plugs use a ceramic insert to isolate the high voltage at the electrode,

ensuring

that

the

spark

happens at the tip of the electrode and

not anywhere else on the plug; this insert does double-duty by helping to burn off deposits. Ceramic is a fairly poor heat conductor, so the material gets quite hot during operation. This heat helps to burn off deposits from the electrode. Some cars require a hot plug. This type of plug is designed with a ceramic insert that has a smaller contact area with the metal part of the plug. This reduces the heat transfer from the ceramic, making it run hotter and thus burn away more deposits. Cold plugs are designed with more contact area, so they run cooler.

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The difference between a "hot" and a "cold" spark plug is in the

shape of the ceramic tip.

The carmaker will select the right temperature plug for each car.

Some cars with high-performance engines naturally generate more heat, so they need colder plugs. If the spark plug gets too hot, it could ignite the fuel before the spark fires; so it is important to stick with the right type of plug for your car.

The Coil The coil is the device that generates the high voltages required to create a spark. It is a simple device -- essentially a high-voltage transformer made up of two coils of wire. One coil of wire is called the primary coil. Wrapped around it is the secondary

coil.

The

secondary

coil

normally has hundreds of times more turns of wire than the primary coil. Current

flows

from

the

battery

through the primary winding of the coil. The primary coil's current can be suddenly disrupted by the breaker points, or by a solid-state device in an electronic ignition. If you think the coil looks like an electromagnet, you're right -- but it is also an inductor. The key to the coil's operation is what happens when the circuit is suddenly broken by the points. The magnetic field of the primary coil collapses rapidly. The secondary coil is engulfed by a

powerful and changing magnetic field. This field induces a current in the

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coils -- a very high-voltage current (up to 100,000 volts) because of the

number of coils in the secondary winding. The secondary coil feeds this voltage to the distributor via a very well insulated, high-voltage wire.

The Distributor The distributor handles several jobs. Its first job is to distribute the high voltage from the coil to the correct cylinder. This is done by the cap and rotor. The coil is connected to the rotor, which spins inside the cap. The rotor spins past a series of contacts, one contact per cylinder. As the tip of the rotor passes each contact, a highvoltage pulse comes from the coil. The pulse arcs across the small gap between the rotor and the contact (they don't actually touch) and then continues down the spark-plug wire to the spark plug on the appropriate cylinder. When you do a tune-up, one of the things youreplace on your engine is the capand rotor –

these eventually wear out because of the arcing. Also, the spark-plug

wires eventually wear out and lose some of their electrical insulation. This can be the cause of some very mysterious engine problems. Older distributors with breaker points have another section in the bottom half of the distributor -- this section does the job of breaking the current to the coil. The ground side of the coil is connected to the breaker points.

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A cam in the center of the distributor pushes a lever connected to

one of the points.

Whenever the cam pushes the lever, it opens the points. This

causes the coil to suddenly lose its ground, generating a high-voltage pulse. The points also control the timing of the spark. They may have a vacuum advance or a centrifugal advance. These mechanisms advance the timing in proportion to engine load or engine speed. Spark timing is

so critical to an engine's performance that most cars don't use points. Instead, they use a sensor that tells the engine control unit (ECU) the exact position of the pistons. The engine computer then controls a transistor that opens and closes the current to the coil.

Types of ignition systems Battery ignition Most four-stroke engines have used a mechanical ignition system. Here, the power source is a lead-acid battery, kept charged by the car's electrical system, which generates electricity using a dynamo or alternator. Battery: The battery is an essential reservoir for storing power to start the car and operate lights when the engine is not running. Generally an 12 volts battery is employed in the car. The battery, primary winding of the ignition coil, condenser and the contact breaker from the primary circuit, whereas secondary winding of the ignition coil, the distributor and the spark plug constitutes the secondary circuit.

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The engine operates contact breaker points, which interrupt the current flow to an induction coil (known as the ignition coil) - a type of autotransformer. This step up the voltage, which is fed via a rotating switch called a distributor to the spark plugs. This system 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 revolutions per minute (RPM), giving better efficiency. This system was used almost universally until the late 1970s, when electronic ignition systems started to appear.

Magneto system In the battery ignition system, the current in the primary winding is supplied by battery, whereas in the magneto ignition system it is magneto which produces and supplies the current in the primary winding.

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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 mopeds, with 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. Generally magneto ignition systems are used in racing cars, motorcycles, scooters. Basically magneto is of two types, ‣ Rotating armature type: it consists of a permanent magnet fitted with the two pole shoe. Between the poles is rotated an armature carrying the primary and the secondary windings. ‣ Rotating magnet type: in this case it is the magnet and not the armature winding which rotates.

Electronic ignition The disadvantage of the mechanical system is that it requires regular adjustment to compensate for wear, and the opening of the contact breakers, which is responsible for spark timing, is subject to mechanical variations. In addition, the spark voltage is also dependent on

contact effectiveness, and poor sparking can lead to lower engine efficiency. Electronic ignition (EI) solves these problems. In an EI system, the contact breaker points are replaced by an angular sensor of some kind - either optical, where a vaned rotor breaks a light beam, or more

commonly using a Hall effect sensor, which responds to a rotating magnet mounted on a suitable shaft. The sensor output is shaped and

processed by suitable circuitry, then used to trigger a switching device

such as a thyristor, which switches a large flow of current through the coil. The rest of the system (distributor and spark plugs) remains as for the mechanical system. The lack of moving parts compared with the

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mechanical system leads to greater reliability and longer service intervals.

For older cars, it is usually possible to retrofit an EI system in place of the mechanical one. During the 1980s, EI systems were developed alongside other improvements such as fuel injection systems. After a while it became logical to combine the functions of fuel control and ignition into one electronic system known as an engine management system.

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