What does exactly means when an engine is 1.6L, or 2.0L? I mean, what is 1.6L? A receptacle? A bottle of coke inside the engine?
In: Engineering
Your engine is basically a giant air pump. The internal volume of the engine tells you how much air can be pushed through the pump during a cycle, which gives a rough relationship with how much power it has (engine designers have a bunch of tools to get more work and power from a small engine).
It’s measured by subtracting the maximum and minimum volume of each cylinder and adding all the cylinders up.
When your engine fires, the expansion from burning fuel pushes one cylinder in the engine from the smallest volume to the largest, then the expanded gas is exhausted and the engine takes in new fuel and air (sometimes compressing it) and the cycle repeats. That expansion is what powers the car, or tool.
It’s used as a selling point, though since they also go over the actual performance numbers (horsepower, torque, fuel economy) it seems rather moot. But it’s just the total volume of displacement; let’s say you have two cups that are big enough to hold .25 liters of liquid and can stack in each other. You take one cup and hold it like 10% of the way in the other cup so now the bottom cup has enough remaining room for say .22 liters, then you push the top cup as far into the bottom cup as it’ll go and the bottom cup barely has any leftover room in it Now, say .05 liters. So your cup experiment has a displacement of .17 liters, .22-.05. The same in cars, the total of how much air all the pistons can move.
But the engine size just appeals to the “monkey brain” part of us, thinking simplistic thoughts like “bigger/more is better.” I have a 4.2L engine that makes 275 HP, but there are engines these days with better technology that are able to make the same 275HP while also being much smaller.
Also see cubic inches, which is just the same measurement but with a different standard. When someone says they “have a 302 under the hood,” they’re referring to a motor with 302 cubic inches (or around 5L) of displacement. In America, the cubic-inch measurement of an engine is often used to identify the exact engine not only in size, but in design and even manufacturer, as our “Big Three” each came up with designs of slightly different sizes, like how Ford made a 351 while Chevy made a 350 and Dodge made a 360.
It’s a measurement of the volume of the inside of the cylinder.
That volume is the place where gas is shot in and sparked to create an explosion. If you’ve got more volume each stroke is going to be stronger or move the piston further with each explosion. All other things being equal, bigger means more power.
It’s a measure (in liters) of the volume available for air and gas to mix, get compressed, and then ignited to cause an explosion that spins a piece of metal around that makes the wheels turn. The more volume, the more power you make. More boom = more go.
And the more room you have in your cylinders, the higher the potential power output of the engine.
It just tells you the volume is for a particular motor. It serves the same purpose as CCs
https://auto.howstuffworks.com/question685.htm
It means the total internal volume of the cylinders is that number of liters. Older American engines are measured in cubic inches, but it’s the same thing.
Imagine two uninflated balloons.
Now take a scale [like this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Scale_of_justice.svg/1009px-Scale_of_justice.svg.png) and put one balloon under each side of the scale. Now fill one of the balloons with explosive gas. Now hold a lighter up to that balloon. It explodes! With a big boom, that side of the scale goes up and the other side goes down. Now fill the second balloon with explosive gas and replace the first one. Light the second balloon. With another boom, that side goes up and the other one goes down!
That’s how an engine works, except instead of balloons, there are empty tubes, and instead of a scale, there are [pistons.](https://media.giphy.com/media/Xlstl4lYzkv96/giphy.gif) The pistons turn other parts of the car which moves the car.
The liter is just how big the balloon or tube is.
It is a reference to the total displacement of an engine. Displacement is simply a measure of the total volume all combustion chambers. The combustion chamber is the volume of a
cylinder measured from the top of the cylinder to to the top of the piston at its lowest point.
So, a 1.5L engine means that the total volume of the combustion chambers in the engine is 1.5 liters. The reason this measurement is quoted is because there is a general correlation between displacement and power. More displacement means more room for fuel & air, which means a bigger bang, which is more power.
That being said, just because there is more displacement doesn’t mean the engine is necessarily more powerful. Technology like turbochargers and superchargers pressurize the incoming air, allowing for more fuel to be added for a bigger bang without having to increase displacement. Also, just because you have more displacement, doesn’t mean you have to use it. You can reduce the air and fuel for better fuel efficiency, but get less power in doing so.
As far as older vehicles, they tend to have higher displacement and less power. This is because the materials they used were not as strong and could not be machined to tight enough tolerance to withstand added power in a smaller package. By having a larger displacement, you have a larger area to spread the force of the explosion, meaning less wear and tear on the components, and hence a more reliable engine.
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