Someone please explain engine compression ratios to me

yhelothar

Lifer
Dec 11, 2002
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I'm a car n00b and what is the importance of engine compression ratios?
It seems that higher performance NA engines have higher compression ratios that is afforded by stronger internals and more cams?
It also seems that turbos like lower compression ratios.. why? Isn't the role of a turbo is to compress air into the engine?
 

boomerang

Lifer
Jun 19, 2000
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641
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Compression = power. The higher the compression ratio, the more power produced. Lots of other things factor in, so this a general statement.

For a turbocharged or supercharged engine, the compression ratio must be lower. A turbo (supercharger too) pumps more air into the engine. The compression ratio must be lower to allow for the increased volume and resultant higher compression ratio. They both pack more air into the cylinder.
 

jaha2000

Senior member
Jul 28, 2008
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Thats kinda right with regards to the turbo.
Its all about the limits of gas and its resistance to detonation.
The higher the octane fuel, the more it can resist detonation due to compression.
A turbo makes a denser intake charge, which kinda gives you some compression right off the bat if that makes sense. Too much compression and the gas will detonate before the piston is all the way to the top of the compression stroke... This will = con rods out the side of the block and broken cranks real quick....
 

PlasmaBomb

Lifer
Nov 19, 2004
11,636
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_ratio

A high compression ratio is desirable because it allows an engine to extract more mechanical energy from a given mass of air-fuel mixture due to its higher thermal efficiency. High ratios place the available oxygen and fuel molecules into a reduced space along with the adiabatic heat of compression - causing better mixing and evaporation of the fuel droplets. Thus they allow increased power at the moment of ignition and the extraction of more useful work from that power by expanding the hot gas to a greater degree.

Higher compression ratios will however make gasoline engines subject to engine knocking if poor quality fuel is used, also known as detonation. This can reduce efficiency or damage the engine if knock sensors are not present to retard the timing. However, knock sensors have been a requirement of the OBD-II specification used in 1996 Model Year Vehicles and newer.

Extracting more energy = more power

Knocking/ detonation = bad - you can potentially kill the engine (and quickly!)

Edit: WRT the turbo, the figures stated by manufacturers are static compressions. During operation the compression achieved is often termed "dynamic compression" (see the bottom of the article).
 

Eli

Super Moderator | Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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What PlasmaBomb said. In a turbo/supercharged car, the static compression ratio is usually lower(sometimes considerably) because the turbo/supercharger is cramming more air/fuel in there, raising the dynamic compression ratio well above the static.

Also as was said, it's all about the limits of the fuel. With very thoughtful combustion chamber design, you can run on regular fuel with a 10:1+ CR. The limits of a specific engine just depend on how it's designed.

As air is compressed, it heats. The higher this compression, the hotter it gets. This is how diesel engines work. They have compression ratios from 18:1 - 25:1 or more. The air is so hot that when the fuel is injected, it ignites without the need of a spark plug.

This high compression ratio is most of what gives diesels an efficiency advantage.

In a gasoline engine, however, if the fuel ignites before the spark plug fires(called pre-ignition), the ignition is very violent and causes "knock" or "pinging" - so named because its sounds like hitting the cylinder head with a small hammer.
 
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KIAman

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2001
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Looking at it from a high level abstract perspective, look at an engine as just an airpump. Air gets pumped in and air gets pumped out. There are 2 ways to pump more air. One, is RPM, the faster the engine turns, the more air it pumps. The other is compression. The higher the compression the more VOLUME of air it pumps.

Here is a good CPU analogy. A CPU's overall speed can be measured in calculations per second. There are 2 ways to achieve that (keeping it simple on purpose). One is the increase frequency (from 1Ghz to 2Ghz) that is equivalent to engine RPM. The other is to increase bandwidth/cores/threading (from doing 1 operation per tick to doing 10 operations per tick) that is equivalent to engine compression ratio.
 

boomerang

Lifer
Jun 19, 2000
18,883
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Looking at it from a high level abstract perspective, look at an engine as just an airpump. Air gets pumped in and air gets pumped out. There are 2 ways to pump more air. One, is RPM, the faster the engine turns, the more air it pumps. The other is compression. The higher the compression the more VOLUME of air it pumps.
I'm sorry, but I would have to disagree with your analogy. I can take a given volume of air and compress it a little or a lot. It's still the same volume of air.

If you'd tied that in with a turbocharger and changed the wording a bit, you'd be correct. At a given RPM (which would have to be high enough for the turbocharger to generate greater than atmospheric pressure), a turbocharged engine will pump more air than a NA engine. Compression ratio has nothing to do with it.
 

EightySix Four

Diamond Member
Jul 17, 2004
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If an engine has a compression ratio of 10:1, every 10 cubic inches of space when the cylinder is at the bottom becomes 1 cubic inch of space when it is at the top. This compression increases the force of the combustion which pushes the cylinder downward. A higher compression ratio will generally mean more power.

Too much and the air/fuel mixture ignites before it needs to and causes detonation or pinging.

By forcing more air into the cylinder, a turbo accomplishes a similar goal.
 

KIAman

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2001
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I'm sorry, but I would have to disagree with your analogy. I can take a given volume of air and compress it a little or a lot. It's still the same volume of air.

If you'd tied that in with a turbocharger and changed the wording a bit, you'd be correct. At a given RPM (which would have to be high enough for the turbocharger to generate greater than atmospheric pressure), a turbocharged engine will pump more air than a NA engine. Compression ratio has nothing to do with it.

No need to be sorry, but you will have to clear some stuff up. What does the bolded portion above have anything to do with the analogy? It sounds like you are assuming an NA engine can only consume air based on atmospheric pressure, although pressure is a contributing portion of it. You don't believe that an NA engine doesn't suck air all on its own, do you? Is it small wonder why removing the air filter (remove intake restriction) results in the engine producing more power?
 

EightySix Four

Diamond Member
Jul 17, 2004
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No need to be sorry, but you will have to clear some stuff up. What does the bolded portion above have anything to do with the analogy? It sounds like you are assuming an NA engine can only consume air based on atmospheric pressure, although pressure is a contributing portion of it. You don't believe that an NA engine doesn't suck air all on its own, do you? Is it small wonder why removing the air filter (remove intake restriction) results in the engine producing more power?

Increasing the compression ratio without changing the volume of the cylinder though only directly creates more pressure, not more airflow. I think. lol
 

KIAman

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2001
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Increasing the compression ratio without changing the volume of the cylinder though only directly creates more pressure, not more airflow. I think. lol

Doh, I get what is being said. <--- learnt. Compression ratio can also be increased by stroke as well as input pressure. Heh.
 

exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
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Doh, I get what is being said. <--- learnt. Compression ratio can also be increased by stroke as well as input pressure. Heh.

Compression ratio is the volume of the entire cylinder when the piston is at bottom dead center divided by the volume of the entire cylinder when the piston is at top dead center.

Increasing stroke without changing the piston or combustion chamber (head shape and gasket thickness) increases not only the displacement and airflow *max potential* of the engine, but also increases the compression ratio (piston goes down further, but it can only come up to the same spot as before, thus by above definition of compression ratio, it has increased).

Typically when you go to a stroker setup to increase displacement, you use stroker pistons that are dished out more to keep the compression ratio the same as before the stroker to avoid aforementioned problems with increased compression ratio. The dish in the top of the piston is like a constant in both the numerator and denominator, it adds a small amount of volume at both ends of the stroke. But it is a disproportionally larger percentage of the volume when the volume of the cylinder is smallest (TDC) than when it is largest (BDC), thus compression is lowered.

eg:

14:1 => [14+.25]:[1+.25] = 11.4:1


As an aside, note above I said displacement only increases the maximum potential of the engine. It is the head that determines how much air actually gets into the engine. Increasing displacement will cause a LOSS in power if your head is already the limiting factor; you don't want supersonic air and turbulence in your induction path. eg: A larger plunger in a syringe without increasing the size of the inlet hole is going to be harder to pull on at the same speed, pull it too fast and it will actually vacuum lock and suck forward when you release it. If you've ever seen a dyno graph and know the characteristic curve where the power peaks then all of the sudden starts dropping fast with more RPM, that threshold has been crossed.
 
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exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
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Looking at it from a high level abstract perspective, look at an engine as just an airpump. Air gets pumped in and air gets pumped out. There are 2 ways to pump more air. One, is RPM, the faster the engine turns, the more air it pumps. The other is compression. The higher the compression the more VOLUME of air it pumps.

Here is a good CPU analogy. A CPU's overall speed can be measured in calculations per second. There are 2 ways to achieve that (keeping it simple on purpose). One is the increase frequency (from 1Ghz to 2Ghz) that is equivalent to engine RPM. The other is to increase bandwidth/cores/threading (from doing 1 operation per tick to doing 10 operations per tick) that is equivalent to engine compression ratio.

You're mixing up different concepts. What you are thinking of is that a 2L engine at 10,000 RPM can move the same volume of air as a 4L engine can at 5,000 RPM. Compression ratio is irrelevant in that concept. Consider that both the 2L and 4L engine have identical compression ratios, and the statement that they flow the same air remains true even with double the RPM between them.

Changing compression does not change volume air flow; volume increase at bottom is canceled by the volume increase at the top. Swept volume stays the same, only ratio changes (see fraction math above).

What you meant to compare is RPM and/or displacement vs air flow. :)

In your analogy, fast clock speed = RPM, number of parallel operations = displacement/cylinders. But compression ratio is something else entirely, a third independent variable, like a die shrink, doing more with less transistors or making the transistors more energy efficient or increasing/decreasing power and heat dissipation, high K dielectric, something along those lines. Note especially that the latter improvements can be applied to *both* fast/narrow CPUs as well as slow/wide CPUs, as can compression ratios be applied to either type of engine, independent of RPM or displacement.

Current evolution of engines is like being at a core count and clock speed limit, and high K dielectric or whatever new gate design or material allows for smaller dies, more transistors, etc. Note that engine displacements and RPMS have held relatively steady over the years as manufacturers reach a brick wall with making cleaner and more powerful engines, but direct injection is like that high K dielectric or something new that allows an increase in compression ratio and higher air/fuel ratio finally to get more power and cleaner emissions and higher MPG without changing RPM or displacement. What about detonation? On a direct injection system, the cylinder only contains air during most of the compression stroke, like a diesel. No fuel to detonate = higher compression, and since fuel is ignited immediately upon injection, it burns controllably AS it's injected over a span of time, rather than the entire PREloaded cylinder going off at once like a bomb.
 
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olds

Elite Member
Mar 3, 2000
50,096
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...

Also as was said, it's all about the limits of the fuel. With very thoughtful combustion chamber design, you can run on regular fuel with a 10:1+ CR. The limits of a specific engine just depend on how it's designed.

....
This. And 10:1 is pushing the limit with California gasoline.
I ran 10:1 (10.03:1, technically) in the 455 I had in my boat. I still mixed a little race gas in it to keep the octane up. It's hard to hear detonation in a jet boat. The people on the shore can hear it but the operator likely won't.


BEFORE:

before.jpg



AFTER:

after.jpg
 
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LTC8K6

Lifer
Mar 10, 2004
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Direct Injection in a gas engine allows a higher CR with regular fuel and thus you can make more HP.
 

TraumaRN

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2005
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Direct Injection in a gas engine allows a higher CR with regular fuel and thus you can make more HP.

Although certain port injected engines can have pretty high CR, my Fusion Hybrid is 12.3-5:1 The original Honda Insight also has some pretty high ratios IIRC as well.
 

LTC8K6

Lifer
Mar 10, 2004
28,520
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Although certain port injected engines can have pretty high CR, my Fusion Hybrid is 12.3-5:1 The original Honda Insight also has some pretty high ratios IIRC as well.

Your Fusion has an Atkinson cycle engine, though. The original insight used a lean burn engine that used a/f ratios of 25:1 at cruise. 10.3 CVT 10.8 5M CR
 

LTC8K6

Lifer
Mar 10, 2004
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It's interesting to note that Ford's new port injected 3.7L V6 outclasses GM's Direct Injected 3.6L V6.
 

LTC8K6

Lifer
Mar 10, 2004
28,520
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Well, the 2011 Mustang V6 has 305hp and gets 31mpg on the highway without DI. So 325hp or more and 33mpg or more is not out of the question if Ford adds DI.
 

TraumaRN

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2005
6,893
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Your Fusion has an Atkinson cycle engine, though. The original insight used a lean burn engine that used a/f ratios of 25:1 at cruise. 10.3 CVT 10.8 5M CR

True, although most hybrids are at least 12:1(prius is 13:1)...and generally on an Atkinson cycle your expansion ratio is > compression ratio but the greater expansion rate allows for energy to be converted to mechanical energy so you energy is more efficient(fuel wise) Or something like that.
 

LTC8K6

Lifer
Mar 10, 2004
28,520
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The Prius is also an Atkinson cycle derivative, rather than an otto cycle engine.There is an otto cycle version of the Prius engine and it's 10.5:1.
 

Fenixgoon

Lifer
Jun 30, 2003
32,874
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Compression = power. The higher the compression ratio, the more power produced. Lots of other things factor in, so this a general statement.

For a turbocharged or supercharged engine, the compression ratio must be lower. A turbo (supercharger too) pumps more air into the engine. The compression ratio must be lower to allow for the increased volume and resultant higher compression ratio. They both pack more air into the cylinder.

not exactly...

compression = work.

revs = power.

turbochargers and superchargers increase the temperature of the air (they are compressors), making your fuel/air mixture more likely knock (detonate prematurely) as it undergoes compression inside the cylinder, since compression naturally increases the temperature of the gas. to mitigate this, intercoolers (heat exchangers) are used to drop the temperature of the air.