Basic Diesel Cycles:

A diesel engine is a category of heat engine which uses the internal combustion procedure to convert the energy stored in the chemical bonds of the fuel into meaningful mechanical energy. This occurs within two steps. First one, the fuel reacts chemically (burns) and releases energy in the form of heat. Second one the heat causes the gasses trapped in the cylinder to expand and the expanding gases, being confined through the cylinder, must move the piston for expand. The reciprocating motion of the piston is otherwise converted into rotational motion through a crankshaft.

For convert the chemical energy of the fuel into meaningful mechanical energy all internal combustion engines have to go by four events: compression, intake, power, and exhaust. How they occur differentiates the several categories of engines and how these events are timed.

All diesel engines fall within one of two types, two-stroke or four-stroke cycle engines. A word cycle refers to any operation or series of events which repeats itself. In that case of a fourstroke cycle engine, the engine requires four strokes of the piston (intake, power, compression, and exhaust) to finish one full cycle. Thus, it needs two rotations of the crankshaft, or 720° of crankshaft rotation (360° x 2) to finish one cycle. Within a two-stroke cycle engine an events (intake, compression, power, and exhaust) occur in just one rotation of the crankshaft, or 360°.